


I'll Be Chasing Angels All My Life

by grumpybell



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:04:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4416863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumpybell/pseuds/grumpybell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Always. Night, Princess.”  He hangs up and finds his mother watching him with oddly clear eyes. He swallows, uncomfortable with the look.<br/>“Who's your princess?” Aurora asks, a smile on her lips. His princess, Bellamy pushes the thought away. Of course it would sound like that to someone who doesn't know.<br/>“She's no one.”<br/>“Now, I know I raised my boy not to lie to his mother,” Aurora says, mock sternly. Bellamy shifts a little, trying to think how to even begin to explain Clarke, what they are and aren't to each other.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>Nominated for Best Modern AU Fiction in The Bellarke Fanfiction Awards 2016</b>
  </p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Darkness

_"All I see, girl, is in black and white_

_in the darkness of the night_

_It seems that I've been chasing angels_

_for what seems the entire of my life."_

 

His mother always said he was born into the wrong world. For a long time, he didn't understand what she meant by that. The woods, the run down houses and rickety trailers, the holes in his jeans, the nights there were only three or four spoonfuls of food to go around, the sound of the freight trains running past his room at night, shaking the wall so dust filtered around him in the moonlight. This is the only world he's ever known. How could he be wrong for it? These days are when he's too little to understand, when his mother is able to shelter him.

Later, when other things start creeping in, he starts to realize what she means. Then it's days spent with hands numb and his nose bitten by the cold as he shoots squirrels with a gun he found in the closet and taught himself how to use, just so they have something to eat for dinner. It's sitting in the uneven pew in the church while his mother marries Willie Stephenson, who has bruised knuckles and mean eyes, but also has an actual log cabin and deer meat, rather than squirrels. It's Willie's “friends” who shuffle in and out of the house at all hours with sallow skin and stringy hair. It's lying awake at night and listening to the sound of his stepfather's fists on his mother's skin. It's the powder and the needles that litter Willie's bedroom and his fierce, unfocused eyes and the cookhouse Bellamy knows is out a couple of miles in the woods. But even with all these things, it's still his world.

The year he turns nine, he starts to see the whole picture. It's the year he spends with bruises on every inch of skin, but he doesn't care because his mother's is clear. It's the year he finds out how hard Willie hits and how everybody knows, but men around here are _supposed_ to discipline their women and if Bellamy chooses to take his mother's punishments, well, that's his business. It's the year he spends most of his days nursing some injury or another, holed up in his bedroom, reading the old musty history books that Willie has lying around. It's the year he realizes he's not one of them.

Octavia is born when Bellamy is eleven, all bright eyes, and she's his responsibility at once. Aurora is weak and quiet and Bellamy's been watching the life seep out of her for years now, so he's the one who gets up at night when Octavia cries and changes her diaper, and sings to her in the dark. Later, he's the one there for her first words and her first steps and the phase where she won't eat anything unless Bellamy is eating it too. She's a shy child, which is good, because Bellamy knows what happens when kids around here misbehave or get in the way.

At fourteen, Bellamy steps in to a blow meant for his mother, as he always does, and in his drug addled rage, Willie beats him until the world goes black. He finds consciousness to the sound of Octavia crying and his mother pressing a wet rag to the cuts all over his body. In urgent whispers his mother makes him promise he won't step in when Willie is beating her anymore.

“He could have killed you, baby. And you've gotta be here for Octavia, okay? You have to walk away.”

He can only keep this promise by spending as little time in the house as possible. He takes Octavia on long walks. He builds her a treehouse out of scrap metal and trees he's cut down himself. He stays away from Willie and that look in his eyes. He starts hunting deer. At least they eat better. It's little consolation when he has to see the bruises blooming all over his mother's skin. He reads and he reads and he reads, just to escape this place.

He's not one of them, but he has to blend in. So he buries the things he wants to say and do, and he throws punches at anyone who questions him because that's what _men_ do, and he helps Willie with deliveries to sad people with sad eyes, and he pretends that he's just like them, and he tries to keep Octavia away from it all.

He never touches the drugs. He can't afford to because he's got a mother and a sister to feed and lecherous drug lord living off his hard work and he can't afford not to be absolutely sharp 100% of the time. But he can't say he doesn't either, because he's in the drug business, plain and simple. He's Willie's stepson and he's one of them, right?

It lasts until Octavia turns twelve and she's bright and shining and a lot like Aurora used to be before life beat her down and it starts to pose a problem. She's just a little girl, but Bellamy sees the way Willie's customers watch her, with greedy eyes that make him sick to his stomach. Even worse, Octavia was raised by Bellamy's hand, and as the shyness begins to fade away, she's all curiosity and fearlessness and fire. She's not afraid, because no one's ever taught her she should be. Her recklessness doesn't go unpunished, and Bellamy finds himself, at 23, taking beatings again, this time for Octavia, rather than his mother.

After Bellamy beats a man, a customer no less, within an inch of his life for daring to lay a hand on Octavia, his mother tells him it's time to go. Escape has never been an option he considered. This was the world. But his mother begs him to take Octavia away before she gets older and it all gets worse. He won't be able to protect her forever. Aurora won't come with them, she's frail and sick, and this is her world, even if she doesn't want it to be her children's.

They leave with one bag each, in the crappy truck Bellamy had been fixing up since he was thirteen, and they don't look back. They don't have anything, no money, no skills, no education. They're transient for almost a year. Octavia wants to go to New York, but there's no way in hell they can afford that. Instead, they settle in a quaint, if boring, little town called Ark, only a five hour drive from where they grew up. Despite its proximity to their old home, the atmosphere is completely different. It's all streets with flower boxes and picturesque houses with colored shutters and white picket fences. It is almost like an alien land, not a trailer or a caving roof to be seen.

Bellamy enrolls Octavia in the local school, which she pouts about, but she's never had solid education and he _wants_ that for her, and he starts working any job he can get. It's tough at first, and the two live out of his truck, which is cramped and uncomfortable, but eventually Bellamy saves enough to get a tiny studio apartment at the edge of town.

The saving grace is the day Jake Griffin hires him. The Griffin's are one of the two wealthiest families in town. Alongside the Jahas, they're practically Ark royalty and they live in huge mansions that would be “next door” to each other if it weren't for their massive amounts of land that surround them. Bellamy has never really seen anything like it.

It turns out, that much land and a house of such size requires a lot of maintenance, which no one in the Griffin family is going to bother to do. So that becomes Bellamy's job, groundskeeper and general handyman. He mows the lawn and weeds the flower beds and waters the plants and sprays the house if they have a problem with bugs, or fixes the appliances that break and even does things as small as changing lightbulbs and oiling door hinges. They pay well for his services and he can even afford to move him and Octavia to a two bedroom apartment and start saving for her to be able to go to college. It's a pretty good job. Of course, all good things must come to an end, so when Clarke Griffin whirls back into town after her first year of med school, she shakes the foundation of Bellamy's world.

He's always known the Griffin's have a daughter. There's photos of her all over the walls of the house, blonde, blue eyed, not a hair out of place perfection. He'd even taken to referring to her as “princess” in his head, since he doesn't actually know her name and she looks just the type. He's seen her bedroom, with shiny wooden floors and the big four poster bed with gauzy light drapes and the pastel colors in her closet and the room entirely dedicated to designer shoes. He knows every inch of the Griffin house because it's his job to keep it pristine. But he's never met the princess.

He's caulking the tile wall in her bathroom the day she comes home, sometime in late August, and he's only alerted to her presence when a voice suddenly says, “Who the hell are you?”

He turns around and finds the princess standing in the doorway of the bathroom, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised. Except, this isn't the princess as she is in any of the pictures displayed all over the house. This girl is wearing sinfully short ripped up jean shorts covered in paint splatters and an oversized t-shirt that's hanging off one shoulder, and converse that are literally falling apart, and she's got her hair thrown into a bun that does little to contain her mess of blonde curls.

“I work here,” he finds himself saying.

“Obviously. Who _are_ you?”

Bellamy narrows his eyes. “Bellamy Blake. Nice to meet you too, Princess.” It's probably not the smartest move, being rude to his employer's daughter, but he's built up a certain amount of resentment towards this girl over the past few months because she's got so much, things he could never ever provide for Octavia and that pisses him the fuck off.

“I have a name, and it's Clarke, not Princess.”

“Whatever you say, Princess.”

She watches him with hard eyes for a moment, then shrugs. “Fine.” She turns on her heel, stripping off her t-shirt as she goes and giving Bellamy a fantastic view of her curves as she heads back into her room. She doesn't bother to close the door and he has to forcefully keep his eyes on his work as he hears clothes hitting her bedroom floor, trying to tamp down the dirty thoughts running rampant in his head. Not gonna happen.

By the time he finishes the bathroom and exits through Clarke's room, she's fast asleep in that gigantic bed. Bellamy doesn't let his eyes linger, just keeps walking, hoping she's only home for a quick visit. She's way too hot and confrontational to have around for long. He expects she'll be back at whatever fancy school she goes to come the end of summer.

For the next two weeks, he and Clarke avoid each other as best as possible. She's the only one ever home, and this is a new issue for him. He's used to working in and around an empty house, so it's always a shock when he turns a corner and there she is. The worst days are, by far, the ones she spends lying out by the pool in scraps of fabric that should not be considered a swimsuit. He puts off any outdoor work he's supposed to do on those days. It's only for a couple of weeks, he reminds himself.

Except, it isn't. September 1st  rolls around and Octavia's been in school (she's a freshman in high school and this terrifies him to no ends) for several weeks already and Clarke Griffin hasn't gone anywhere. Finally, one day, when he nearly collides with her in a stairwell and she's got on the tiniest tank top known to man, he can't stop himself from losing it.

“Aren't you supposed to be back at school?” he asks harshly.

Clarke stares at him. “No?”

“Aren't you _in_ school?”

“I'm taking a year off.” Clarke folds her arms protectively across her middle. “Med school isn't exactly a walk in the park, you know.”

“And doing _what_?” He knows he's being unreasonably cold. He just can't stand Clarke always being there, looking ridiculously delectable at all times, and like, can't a guy catch a break?

“I don't see how that's any of your business.” There's vulnerability in her blue eyes and he can tell he's touched on something deeply sensitive, though he isn't sure what it is, because the girl has the opportunity to go to _med_ _school_ for fuck's sake and he'll be lucky if he can save enough to afford to put Octavia through community college.

“Of course, perfect princess is sick of her perfect life.”

“You don't know anything about me.” Her jaw is set and her bottom lip has the slightest tremble to it and he should stop this, right now. He should stop. But it's like he doesn't have control over his own voice and he's spent so long burying the compassion in himself that it might be dead for good.

Bellamy scoffs. “I take care of your mansion top to _bottom_ , you really want to play this game? You've got everything anyone could ask for and you're in fucking _med school_ and you want to just take a break a lie around for a year on mommy and daddy's money? Some people would _kill_ to be in your place. You're delusional and spoiled, Princess.”

A tear escapes the corner of her eye and slides down her cheek and Bellamy immediately wishes he could take back his words. It's not her fault he's angry and frustrated and not a very good person, but before he has a chance to say anything, she pushes past him and disappears up the stairs. She doesn't even slam her bedroom door and that makes it, somehow, worse.

He spends the next week expecting to get fired. She has that power and she has every motivation in the world to seek revenge. All she has to do is mention to Jake Griffin that she wants him gone and he's sure he wouldn't think twice. But it doesn't happen. He doesn't get a phone call or a note terminating his services. He receives his payment right on time. He doesn't understand it. And it's this, more than anything, that sends him out to the pool where Clarke is tanning, swallowing his pride. He jumps right into it.

“Why do I still have a job?”

Clarke opens one eye, regarding him for a moment, before pushing into a sitting position and putting on her sunglasses. “What do you mean?”

“I yelled at you and you didn't get me fired.”

“Yes.” Clarke's voice gives away nothing.

“Why not?”

For several moments, she says nothing. “You're kidding yourself if you think that you're the cruelest person in my life, Bellamy Blake. Actually, you're kidding yourself if you think what you said to me was even the cruelest thing that has been said to me in that exact stairwell. I'm not made of glass.” And then she lies back down, effectively dismissing him.

He spends the rest of the day wondering about Clarke's words and the set of Clarke's shoulders when she'd said them. He can't imagine Jake Griffin as cruel, and Abby seems cold, though she mostly ignores Bellamy's existence entirely, but not cruel, exactly. He tries to shake the thoughts away. He has a lot more to do than worry about Clarke's life.

And for a few days, things settle down. He doesn't see Clarke much and he doesn't look for her. It's better this way, not seeing her, not thinking about her, not wondering about her strange words. It's fine, until the day he's repainting the fence around the garden and Clarke strolls up, calm as can be in a baby blue sundress and sits down several feet away and just watches him.

“Do you need something?” he asks, finally, after ten minutes of trying to ignore her presence.

“I'm bored.”

“And you thought the solution to that was to watch me paint a fence?”

“I thought you might be bored too.”

“Correct assumption, but unlike you, I don't have much choice in the matter. I have this thing called a job.”

Clarke snorts. “Where are you from, Bellamy?”

“Nope. Not doing this. I'm not spilling my life story to entertain you, Princess.”

“What if we trade?”

Bellamy scratches at some dried paint on his pants. “Trade what, exactly?”

“You answer my questions. I'll answer yours.”

“I agree to nothing.” She doesn't know what she's asking for. He doesn't have a pretty story to tell and he's not going to spill it to a girl like her. She's never going to understand going to bed hungry and deep bruises down to your bones and the glazed look that the drugs give people.

“Where are you from?” Clarke tries again.

“Nowhere you would've heard of or would want to go.”

Clarke sighs. “Close enough, I guess.”

“So, what, now I get to ask you something?”

“Sure,” Clarke shrugs.

“Who _is_ the cruelest person in your life?” He goes straight for the jugular, just like he's always been taught. He doesn't expect an answer, but he does expect it to shut her up. Her face shutters off, lips pressing into a thin line and this is the part, he thinks, where she stands up and walks away. Only she doesn't.

“The man who shot my best friend in the head and didn't shoot me,” Clarke says, coldly. The words are enough to leave him speechless, trying to piece together the girl he's been building in his head with the brutal sentence she'd just uttered. He tries to find words, but the only one that manages to come out is her name.

“It's not your turn,” she interrupts him, voice way too light for the moment. “Do you have family?”

He thinks, for a moment, of his mother with her weak smiles and beaten eyes and the galaxies of bruises on her skin. “A sister. Octavia.”

Clarke smiles slightly. He doesn't want to ask her anymore questions. He doesn't want her to state terrible things in that cold, honest voice of hers, like it's nothing, like it doesn't touch her. He wants this conversation to be over.

“It's your go,” Clarke reminds him.

“Forget it. I don't want to,” Bellamy says, keeping his eyes firmly on the fence. Clarke is quiet behind him, where he knows her skirt is fanned out around her like the princess that he's been thinking she is. It's hard to reconcile this image with her words. He chances a quick look back her direction and see's she's making a chain of flowers from the clover that grows thick in the grass. He swallows any words that might be working their way up his throat and for the next two hours, neither one of them says anything at all. Then, as if she's encountered some invisible cue, Clarke stands up, smooths out her skirt, and makes her way back to the house. It's the first time in hours he feels like he can breathe again. He doesn't know who Clarke Griffin is, but he's starting to think he really doesn't want to find out either.

Clarke sits near where he's working a lot after that day. They don't really talk again, save for a few words exchanged here or there, but he starts to get acclimated to her presence. She often brings a sketchbook and her eyes drift away from the world as beautiful things fill the pages. Once or twice, he sees himself, outlined in charcoal on the paper, but he doesn't comment and pushes away any insecurity he feels about being drawn because it's a thousand times better than hearing about her dead best friend.

On several occasions, he finds himself unfortunately privy to drop down drag out fights between Clarke and Abby. Though Abby is rarely home during the day, she usually pops back in for a moment or two around lunch and it's become something of a habit for her and Clarke to scream at each other until they're both red faced and breathless. Bellamy does his best to be far _far_ away during these fights, but a few words still echo up to him, things like, _school, wells, you're wasting your life, ungrateful, can't go on forever, never cared, could have tried, just leave again_ . He doesn't want to know what the fights are about. He doesn't want to care. He doesn't like that when he sees Abby's car drive up, his eyes search for Clarke and his shoulders go tight and he feels that old, niggling urge to step in, to take whatever anger and absorb it into his body, to _protect_ her. Clarke Griffin certainly doesn't need his protection.

He manages not to have to deal with actually speaking to Clarke for almost three weeks. It's not until his monumentally crappy truck dies as he's trying to leave work to pick Octavia up from school, that she makes an unavoidable appearance. She watches him tinker with the truck for a few moments, grumbling and cursing under his breath, before she speaks.

“Your truck's messed up?”

“Very observant of you, Princess,” he growls. And okay, maybe he'd try to be a little more civil if he wasn't already enormously pissed.

“Do you need a ride?”

“What?”

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” Clarke repeats, gazing at him steadily. His first instinct is to say no. He doesn't accept favors or handouts and Octavia is his sister and he can take care of her himself, thank you very much. But the truth is, there's no way he's gonna get his truck fixed on time and Octavia will be stranded at school wondering where he is, so he swallows his pride.

“It's just, I'm supposed to pick my sister up from school.” Not really a yes or no answer.

“Octavia,” Clarke says. “Right.” She holds up her car keys. “Let's go.”

Clarke Griffin drives a BMW with gorgeous leather interior. Bellamy feels guilty even sitting on the front passenger seat in his work clothes.

“She goes to Ark High?” Clarke asks as she pulls out of the driveway.

“Yeah. She's a freshman.” He doesn't know why he felt the need to add that bit of information. Clarke blinks.

“How old are _you_?” she asks.

“Twenty five.”

“So that makes you...”

“Eleven years older than O, yeah. She's really my half sister. And my mom had me young.” He should shut up. He's not someone who talks about himself or his life or his mother, but the words just kind of rush out.

“I always wanted a sibling,” Clarke says wistfully, “but Mom didn't have me until she was thirty four and she didn't want to have more after that.”

“How old are you?” Bellamy finds himself asking.

“Twenty two.” Clarke looks more relaxed right now, driving through town, than he's seen her since that first day, curled asleep in her bed.

“And you've finished a year of med school.” It's not really a question, but it sort of comes out like one. He's thinking about how he never finished high school. He's thinking about how, at 22, his days were spent in the woods with his gun and his nights were spent running drugs.

“Yeah.” Her voice is small and a little sad. She turns into the high school parking lot where there's a line of cars waiting for students. Bellamy hops out of the car and leans against the passenger side door, scanning the crowd for Octavia's familiar dark hair. She spots him before he sees her and comes striding out of the crowd, aimed at him, a quizzical expression on her face. Bellamy doesn't give her time to ask, just nods at the car and slides back into the passenger seat. Octavia throws her backpack into the back, then follows it.

“Uh, Octavia, this is Clarke,” Bellamy says uncomfortably. Clarke turns around in her seat to look back at Octavia.

“Hi, nice to meet you,” Clarke smiles.

“Hi.” Octavia is quiet for a moment. “How do you know my brother?”

Bellamy swears there's a ghost of a smile on Clarke's lips as she turns back to the front and starts the car.

“He works for my parents.”

“You're a Griffin?” There's a bit of awe in Octavia's voice.

“Yep.”

Bellamy interrupts before things can get too personal. “So, we're gonna drop you off at home, O. And then I have to go back to Clarke's because the truck is messed up and it'll take a little while to get it running.”

He can hear the pout in Octavia's voice. “Can't I just come and hang out with Clarke?”

“O, I'm sure Clarke has better things to do than hang out with a 14 year old while I fix my truck.”

“I don't mind,” Clarke interjects.

Octavia smiles smugly and Bellamy doesn't say anything because he knows he's got no chance against the combined forces of his sister and Clarke Griffin.

While Bellamy wages war on his truck, Clarke and Octavia sit on the front lawn, giggling and whispering together in a way that makes him feel a strange surge of affection and annoyance. Clarke fills Octavia's hair with intricate braids, interwoven with clover and even makes her a clover crown. It's been a long time since he saw Octavia look so full of light. At one point, he glances over to see Clarke painting Octavia's nails a bright, electric blue. He's reminded of Clarke's words in the car, _I always wanted a sibling_. He can see it, now, in her instinct to make Octavia smile and the gentle look on Clarke's face.

He manages to get the truck working just before sundown, and is surprised that neither Abby or Jake are home yet. He almost feels a little guilty, packing Octavia away in the truck with him and leaving Clarke all alone. But then he reminds himself that Clarke isn't his responsibility. The whole rest of the evening Octavia is full of words, mostly about Clarke.

“...and she spent three whole months in _Paris_ after the end of the school year and she worked at this bakery, so she said she could make me chocolate croissants!” Octavia is spinning around the living room, all lit up and shining. “And did you know Clarke dances? She said she could give me lessons if I wanted! I could do that, right Bell?”

“Mmmm?” He'd only been half listening, focused on the vegetables he's chopping for stew.

“ _Clarke_.” Octavia says. “She said she'd give me dance lessons! And teach me French if I want. You should ask her out, Bell. Don't think I didn't see the way you were looking at her. I mean, I get it, she's gorgeous and smart and nice and she'd be really good for you.”

“O.” He tries to keep his voice gentle and steady. “I wouldn't take any of Clarke's promises too seriously. She grew up differently than we did. I don't think she really wants to spend that much time with someone so much younger than her. And girls like Clarke don't date guys like me.”

Octavia narrows her eyes. “Clarke is _nice_ , Bell. And since you're apparently oblivious, she's _lonely_ and she's sad. She doesn't _have_ anybody. And I'm pretty sure we're both better than nothing.”

Bellamy swallows his retort. Arguing with Octavia about this won't do any good. He'll have to talk to Clarke about it, tell her not to fill Octavia's head with things that aren't going to happen.

He means to confront Clarke the next time he sees her, but it turns out the next time he sees her is when he accidentally walks in on an argument between her and Abby. He's done a miraculous job of avoiding this situation so far, but the moment he steps into the kitchen (planning to check on the ice maker which Jake had called to tell him wasn't working properly) he realizes his luck has finally run out. It's more the aftermath of the argument, than the argument itself, Clarke and Abby facing off at either end of the kitchen island, Abby with her arms crossed, Clarke hastily wiping away tears. Bellamy's never exactly had warm and fuzzy feelings towards Abby, but the look on Clarke's face is enough to send them into glacial temperatures. Bellamy hovers awkwardly at the edge of the kitchen, unsure if he should just back out, or go on about his work as usual. He's saved from making a decision by the monumental sigh Abby lets out, gathering up her keys.

“I have to get back to the office,” she says to her daughter. “We'll continue this conversation later.” She breezes out, then, chin up and heels snapping on the floor. Bellamy approaches the ice machine, watching Clarke out of the corner of his eye. She's got her hands braced on either side of the kitchen island, taking slow, deep breaths.

“Are you okay?” It's against his better judgment to say anything, but his tongue betrays him.

“I'm fine,” Clarke says shakily, a little hitch in her voice. Bellamy begins to empty the ice maker, the ice clattering loudly.

“What are you and your mom always arguing about, anyway?” He curses himself as soon as he says it. Not the time. Never would be the time.

Clarke laughs. “You mean in all this time you haven't figured it out yet?”

“No?”

“Mom used to be a surgeon, you know,” Clarke says wearily. “And a couple of years ago, she decided to go into politics. More glory in politics and all that. But a daughter in med school following in her footsteps sounds a lot better than a dropout.”

Bellamy realizes he's frozen, one hand inside the ice maker. “You dropped out? I thought you were just taking a year off.”

Clarke smiles darkly. “That's my mother's story. She's working very hard to make it true. There are certain things a politician's daughter must be, even if we have to lie about it.”

Bellamy stops trying to work entirely. “So you're not going back.” He has a hard time wrapping his head around the idea.

“You don't have to lecture me about it too. I know it wouldn't make sense to you. It's not like I don't want to do _something_ , I just don't want it to be medicine. I only ever went to med school in the first place to try to please my mother. I hate it there. I can't...” She swallows thickly. “I can't do it anymore, not after Wells.”

Bellamy doesn't know what this last bit means, but he can see the despair in Clarke's eyes. He's a little ashamed to admit even to himself that he'd doubted Clarke had ever felt pain as deep as this. She seems to see the confusion on his face, because she continues.

“Wells was my friend... The one who was shot. I couldn't save him.” She brushes away a few more tears and turns her face away from him. Bellamy struggles to find words. What is he supposed to say in response to something like that?

“Clarke...” he starts, hoping he'll miraculously think of something.

“It's okay.” She faces him again, forcing on a smile. “I shouldn't have sprung that on you. So, do you think Tuesday and Thursday would work for Octavia?”

Bellamy blinks. “What?”

“Didn't she tell you she wants me to teach her some dance?”

“She did,” Bellamy says slowly, feeling _way_ out of his depth. “I just didn't think you were serious about that.”

“ _Really_ ?” Clarke raises her eyebrows. “I spend my days _watching_ you do your job. What about this screams 'too busy to teach your sister dance'?” Bellamy rubs the back of his neck, already half hating the words that are about to come out of his mouth. It's not enough to stop him, though.

“It's just... Octavia hasn't had a lot of stability in her life, okay? And she can't afford to be someone's pet project just until something more interesting comes along.”

Clarke's eyes go cold. “Excuse me?”

“It's not personal, Clarke, I'm just saying-”  
“-Please explain to me how none of this is _personal_ ? From the moment I came home, you've had this image in your head of who I am and _apparently_ it's some sort of flakey, stuck up, brat. It doesn't matter what I _do_ , I guess, because that's who you want me to be for you own peace of mind. Well, even after all this time, you know _nothing_ about me, Bellamy Blake.” Clarke's shoulders are squared. “Tell Octavia that I'll pick her up from school on Tuesday.” She turns on her heel and stomps away.

Bellamy leans his forehead against the fridge. “Fuck.” That had gone exceptionally badly. He refuses to admit that Clarke has a point about him, but that doesn't stop the guilt that's swirling around in the pit of his stomach. Fuck. Clarke Griffin is going to be the death of him.

 


	2. Don't You Know?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the feedback has been so lovely from you guys! Thank you so much for reading! The next update will be a little slower. Chapter 3 is completely written, but it's going to take a bit longer to edit because it's a monster. Like a 12k+ Bellamy monster, so yeah... I'm hoping to have Chapter 3 up in the beginning half of this week.

 

“ _And all because Heaven is on fire._

_Oh, don't you know?_

_And my heart has got a fever,_

_I can't let you go.”_

 

Clarke keeps her distance from Bellamy for several days after what she has now decided to call “the kitchen incident.” She doesn't know how to feel about him at all. Sure, he's infuriatingly attractive, but that's really not making up for his attitude towards her. At first, she'd figured he'd just taken one look at her supposedly charmed life and sorted her into a privileged, shallow box. It's mildly irritating, but she can also see how he'd make that assumption.

But Bellamy has an amazing ability to get under her skin and, like it or not, he's pretty much the only company she has these days. Clarke doesn't like being alone. When she was younger, she used to revel in it, getting quiet time to herself and her dreams, but these days the quiet only makes her think of the resounding silence in the alleyway after the gunman had pulled the trigger and Wells had slumped to the ground. Being alone sometimes leads to panic attacks, where Clarke feels like the weight of the world is pressed down on her chest and she needs to be around other people to remember that the world is still turning, that she's alive and not buried underground next to Wells.

Bellamy isn't exactly her first choice of company. But he can be alright, mostly when he keeps his mouth shut. He's nice to draw, all sharp lines and bold strokes. Every now and then, she thinks she gets a glimpse of something softer, something gentle and sweet and _good_ , but he covers it up so fast that she almost doubts it exists in the first place. And sometimes, he's so vicious she feels he's stopped the world spinning all on his own and then even the presence of another human being can't keep her afloat. She knows he hasn't figured it out, why she spends time watching him work, why she dropped out of school, that she's not even a little bit okay. She knows he hasn't really seen her, but it's better like that, probably.

Octavia is a different story. Bellamy's little sister is all brightness and color and inquiry. She sees Clarke in ways that oppose each other. She watches her with wide, awe filled eyes, trying to copy the way she moves and listening almost reverentially to Clarke's advice. But other times, Clarke can tell that Octavia sees under the mask in ways that Bellamy hasn't. This is a little girl who has watched a lot of people hurt, Clarke thinks.

She's a natural dancer. Movement comes a lot easier to Octavia than it ever did to Clarke. Technically, Clarke is superb. She's been in lessons since she could walk, but Octavia's got a flow and bend that you can't train. Watching her dance feels like watching something from another world. She picks up the moves quickly and happily, joy almost radiating off of her. Clarke quickly ups their lesson times to four times a week. Most days, it's her picking Octavia up from school. She and Bellamy don't talk about it unless there's a schedule change. Mostly, they talk through Octavia.

Several weeks into her lessons, Octavia lays down on the dance floor, staring up at the ceiling and taking deep breaths.

“Are you and Bell mad at each other?” Octavia asks, not looking at Clarke.

“Not exactly.” Clarke sits down next to the other girl. She doesn't want to lie to Octavia or talk to her like a child. Octavia is much too smart for that. “Things don't always go well when we talk, so we just sort of stopped talking.”

“Bellamy isn't good at saying what he feels,” Octavia says quietly. “But it's not really his fault. He couldn't afford to be the kind of guy he really is where we grew up.”

Clarke shifts uncomfortably. She's always wondered about Bellamy's past, about the darkness in his eyes, but she isn't sure that she should let Octavia spill his secrets.

“I don't know that you should be telling me about this,” Clarke tells her.

“It was my life too,” Octavia protests. “He might not want to talk about it, but I do. I want to be able to talk about it. Can't I talk to you, Clarke?”

She sighs. Octavia has a point. “Okay. What's your story, Octavia?” For a minute, she thinks Octavia won't answer, that she's changed her mind, but then she speaks up.

“My dad's a drug lord. He cooks meth in trailers in the woods. I'm not even sure if Bellamy knows I _know_ that. He always tried to protect me from it. Willie, that's my dad, wasn't Bell's dad. I don't who his dad was, he never talks about him, I don't think he knows either. My mom had Bell when she was fifteen, so I don't think the guy stuck around at all. Mom always said Bellamy was too soft for that world, too gentle, too kind,” Octavia is tracing little patterns on the wood floor with her fingertip. Clarke is struggling to connect the words _too soft, too gentle, too kind_ to the Bellamy Blake she knows.

“I was a happy kid. I didn't understand everything that was going on around me. I found out later, that the first few years of my life, Bellamy was getting beat up by Willie pretty bad. See, where we're from, men are supposed to keep their women in line and Willie was always trying to hit my mom. Bellamy would defend her and take the beating instead. Our mom was really weak. She was sick a lot, and couldn't really take the hits that Willie would deal out. But after I was born, Bellamy pretty much raised me. So one day, Willie beats Bell so bad that he doesn't wake up for almost 20 hours and he's all bruises and blood and Mom tells him he's not allowed to defend her anymore, because I need him more than Mom does.

“So after that, he's just all about me all the time. And he basically just makes sure that I have everything he can give me and that I don't get hurt by all the crap that's going on around us. But he also has to prove that he belongs, so he starts hitting people who might hit him and he just kind of... stops being who he is to anyone but me, because he can't afford it. He starts running drugs for Willie. But when I get older, guys start noticing me and Bellamy's having to fight them off and Mom tells him to take me and just go. So he did. Sometimes, I think I ruined his life. Sometimes, I think he thinks that.”

“Octavia, I'm sure he doesn't think that.”

Octavia shrugs. “So that's it. That's how we ended up here. What about you, Clarke Griffin? What's your story?”

She's never told anyone the whole story with med school and Wells and the panic attacks, but she likes the idea of being able to talk about it and Octavia is tough, it's not too morbid of a story for her, so Clarke takes a deep breath and begins.

“There isn't a lot to tell until the past couple of years. I grew up here. I had everything I wanted except the attention of my parents. My dad tried, and I love him for it, but it's always been mostly me. Me and Wells. He's, he was, Theolonious Jaha's son, you know, the people who live next door. We both had parents in high achieving fields and we were both left to just kind of find our own way, so we found each other. He's the closet thing to a sibling I've ever had. He was the only one who was always there for me. So my mom really wanted me to go to med school, because that's what she did, and I've kind of always.... I wanted to make people happy. So I did. I got my undergraduate degree as fast as I could and then I went to med school and it was _awful_. I hated it. And Wells came to visit me because he knew I was upset and we were out...” Clarke pauses as her voice wavers. Octavia had told her story with a solid, unshakable voice. Clarke wishes should could do the same. She doesn't feel half as courageous as the girl next to her.

“We got mugged,” Clarke says, quietly. “And the guy, he just... He shot Wells in the head for _no reason_. And then he just ran away, left me there with his body. There wasn't anything I could do and I just... I never, ever want to go back to med school. I never wanted it and now I just feel sick thinking about it. I don't even like being alone. I just see it over and over again.”

Clarke doesn't see Octavia sit up, but the next thing she knows, she's enveloped in slender arms. She leans into the girl, who should be too young for such things, but who has a commanding, adult presence.

“You shouldn't go back to med school,” Octavia says, “You should do whatever it is that makes you happy.” Clarke takes a deep breath and wonders why that's the first time anyone's said that to her.

If it's weird that pretty much her only friend in the world is a 14 year old girl, Clarke doesn't have anyone else around to judge. Octavia is bright, and kind, and curious of everything around her. Clarke teaches her how to do her own braids and the best color pallete for her skin tone and how to do winged eyeliner. The world feels very alive when Octavia's around.

She can't help but notice that Octavia has started to ignore Bellamy if he's still around working while she's over. Clarke doesn't want to get in the middle of a sibling thing, but she's a little worried she's the cause. She and Bellamy are still hardly on speaking terms and she only joins him when she absolutely can't bear to be alone, and even then she only draws.

“Is something going on with you and your brother?” she eventually asks.

Octavia rolls her eyes. “We're fighting. It's fine. We fight a lot.”

“About what?”

“About him being an idiot.”

“No arguments there,” Clarke mutters.

Octavia laughs. “Despite what you think, Bell likes you.”

“I think you're seriously misreading the situation,” Clarke tells her.

“He does.” Octavia shrugs. “If he didn't, he'd never let me spend all this time here. Plus, he complains about you sitting around drawing all the time, which is basically Bellamy code for 'I'm upset that Clarke and I are no longer on speaking terms and I feel guilty about it but am too much of a prideful idiot to apologize for whatever it is that I did to upset her.' Trust me. I know these things.”

Clarke giggles. “How are you two even related?”

“I know, all the good genes seem to have skipped him.”

Clarke starts to answer, but her phone ringing cuts off her response. She scrambles for it, seeing her mother's name. Shit.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Clarke, thank goodness. Listen, sweetie, I need you to put on something nice and come down to city hall. There's this big event going on and your father's been caught at work and we need to show we're a strong family unit, so you really need to be here.”

Clarke doesn't want to do this, but she knows if she protests, Abby will blow up and Clarke is _tired_ of fighting. “I'll be there as soon as I can.” Clarke hangs up and makes eye contact with Octavia.

“Do you think your brother can come get you? I need to shower and get changed ASAP.”

Octavia shrugs. “Call him and find out?”

“Please don't make me do this.”

“I don't even have a cell phone, Clarke.” She sidles off before Clarke has a chance to point out that Octavia doesn't need her own cell phone to be the one calling her brother.

Clarke takes a deep breath. “Fine.” She dials Bellamy's number, dreading the moment he picks up.

“Hello?”

“Hey. Can you come pick Octavia up? This thing at city hall came up and I have to go.”

“Clarke?”

“No, it's the other random girl you let pick up your sister from school.”

“Very funny.”

“Can you do it?”

Bellamy sighs. “Of course I can do it, Princess. She's my _sister_.”

“Great.” Clarke ignores the slight and hangs up. She tells Octavia to turn on the TV or something and runs upstairs to hop in the shower. It's been a couple of months since her mother made her dress up for an event, which might be a record, actually, but Clarke is the queen of getting dolled up quickly.

She makes it back down the stairs just two minutes before Bellamy shows up in his truck. Clarke grabs her keys and ushers Octavia outside, locking the door behind her. She turns to find Bellamy hovering half out of the truck, staring at her with wide eyes.

She becomes suddenly aware that he's never seen her like this, dressed to the nines in a tight designer dress and towering heels, her eyes painted dark and her hair curled to big, soft waves. Octavia punches Bellamy on the arm and says, quite loudly, “Stop ogling her, Bell. She's not a piece of meat.”

For the first time ever, Clarke sees Bellamy blush. “I was not,” he protests, ducking back into the truck. Clarke pretends like she doesn't notice as she heads for her own car and by the time she's buckled in, Octavia and Bellamy are already gone.

To be totally honest, Clarke isn't 100% sure what is actually going on a city hall. All she knows is that she's had about fifty people shake her hand as her mother introduces her as her daughter who's in the middle of a degree in medicine. Luckily for Abby, people don't ask much about it and Clarke keeps her mouth shut on that front, even if it makes her feel a little ill. Only one person in the entire world seems to understand that Clarke doesn't want to study medicine and seems to think that's okay and that's a fourteen year old girl who she only met weeks ago.

Somewhere around nine o'clock, her father finally makes an appearance. He looks tired, dark circles under his eyes, but he flashes his smile freely and charms anyone who comes near. Clarke hovers in his general vicinity because she'd much rather hear her father say, _this is my daughter Clarke, yes. Yes, she's done very well_ , instead of the constant med school comments from her mother. It's lies, of course, Clarke is a mess, but at least his lies don't make her feel like she's going to throw up.

She drinks too much. She's a calm, almost invisible, drunk (unless there's tequila involved), so she manages to avoid her mother's rage. On the downside, she ends up sitting in her car at the end of the night, staring at the steering wheel and realizing she can't drive home. She can't drive. She can't call her parents. She could call a taxi, but she doesn't want to leave her car. Downtown isn't the best place to leave a car as nice as hers. She tries, desperately, to think of anyone who she could reach out to, but she doesn't have anyone. She climbs into the backseat, tripping a little over the middle console, and curls up, kicking off her shoes. Her head is spinning, so she presses it into the leather of the seat, taking deep breaths. She stays like that until she falls asleep.

She wakes up in the middle of the night, confused and unable to breathe. Her head is pounding and she's got images of Wells' crumpled form on ground flashing behind her eyes and she fumbles for her cell phone, wanting to hear someone's voice, to remember that there's still a world out there. She grabs her phone and throws the car door open, tumbling out of the car and scraping her palms and knees on the pavement. She doesn't bother to get up. Instead, she stares at the screen of her phone and tries to think of someone to call. That's how she's gotten into this mess in the first place.

Through her disjointed thoughts, she thinks maybe Bellamy will let her talk to Octavia. She calls him before she can think better of it, staring at the pavement and watching blood ooze out of her knees where the ground has torn them open.

“What the hell?” Bellamy's voice is rough and confused.

“C-can I talk to Octavia?” Clarke manages to force out, her words slurring and hitching. Even to her own ears she sounds like a mess. Her chest heaves, but it's like she can't get any air.

“ _Princess_ ?”  
“P-p-please. I- I can't- I can't breathe. I just...”

“Clarke? What's going on? Are you okay?”

“I can't-” Clarke becomes sharply aware of how stupid this whole idea was. Of course she shouldn't have called Bellamy. It's the middle of the night. Octavia is asleep. Of course she's asleep.

“Clarke?”

“I'm s-sorry.” She hangs up the phone. Her palms and knees sting, but she relishes the feeling, trying to focus on the pain under her skin, rather than the tightness of her lungs. Slowly, her breath comes back to her. She clambers back into the car, ignoring the smears of blood she leaves on the leather. Her phone starts ringing, Bellamy's number flashing across the face. She lets it go to voicemail. It starts ringing again. Clarke turns the sound off, closes her eyes, and breathes.

The next time she wakes up, there's sun slanting through the windows. Clarke sits up stiffly, a deep ache in her hands and knees. Shit. She has hazy memories of the end of the night, saying goodbye to people, climbing into the car. She gazes at her hands and tries _not_ to remember the phone call she'd made, but unfortunately, that is very clear. Her cheeks burn with embarrassment. She's never going to be able to look Bellamy in the eyes again.

She drives home slowly, giving her parents extra time to leave for work. She knows she looks a mess, tangled hair, blood smeared on her skin and clothes, dark circles under her eyes. She pulls into her driveway and immediately sees the flaw in her plan. Bellamy is weeding the front flower bed, but he straightens up at the sound of her car. She's pretty sure the look on his face is somewhere between anger and relief. She sits in the car for a few moments, steeling herself to face him.

He's only a few feet away when she gets out of the car. She looks up to meet his eyes and sees his face go pale.

“What the hell happened?” Bellamy steps forward, but stops short of her. She realizes he's staring at all the blood.

“I'm fine.” Clarke makes a dismissive gesture. “I fell, that's all.”

“That's _all_ .” The anger is back. “You called me at _four_ in the morning, hysterical and drunk and then you _hung up_ and didn't answer your phone and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to call the cops or what was going on. And then I get here and you're not _here_ and what the hell was I supposed to think? What was I supposed to _do?_ What _happened_?”

Clarke keeps her eyes on the blood pattern on her hands. One of the drops is vaguely shaped like Louisiana. She knows Bellamy won't stop asking questions until she gives him answers. She knows he's not just going to go away. But the truth is embarrassing.

“I just... I drank too much at this thing last night.” Clarke talks to her feet, so she doesn't have to watch Bellamy think even less of her than he already does. “I didn't want to leave my car downtown, so I slept in it. I get...” This is the part she'd never intended to reveal, but she doesn't have a choice. “I get panic attacks sometimes. I- Octavia is the only one who knows about them and I was drunk and thought if I called you maybe she could help me with it... it helps to have someone talk to me, or even just be around, but I was in this parking lot by myself.” Clarke shakes her head. “I wouldn't have called if I was thinking straight, I just panicked.” She finally manages to bring her eyes up to his face. Bellamy is completely unreadable.

“You didn't call your parents.” She's not sure if Bellamy's asking, or just working it all out in his head.

“No.”

“Okay.” His voice is slow and calm and there's still no expression on his face. “It's okay. You should probably get cleaned up before your mom stops by at lunch.” He nods at her and Clarke knows he has a point, but she feels like there are things hanging in the air between them. He hasn't really _said_ anything. Still, she takes the escape he offers and heads straight for her shower. The hot water stings on her cuts, but she makes sure to clean them thoroughly. She'll never live it down if she gets an infected scratch.

If there's one thing that's good about not having anything to do, it's that she can throw on sweatpants and a t-shirt and crawl into bed. Her mattress and pillows feel like heaven compared to the backseat of her car. She closes her eyes, tries to forget what an incredible mess she is, and curls into a ball, trying to ignore the pounding in her head.

She wakes up to a knock on her bedroom door. She doesn't want to talk to her mother, not today, but she knows she doesn't have much choice. Abby will come in anyway.

“Come in.” It turns out it's not Abby. Bellamy is carrying a tray with him and he stops a few feet from the bed, looking uncomfortable.

“I brought you lunch. And painkillers.”

Clarke sits up. “What?”

“You looked pretty hungover, no offense.” He comes close enough to hand her the tray. On it, there's a bowl of tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, a glass of water, and a couple of painkillers.

“You made me lunch?” Clarke doesn't understand.

Bellamy rubs the back of his neck, his eyes scrunching up. “I'm not completely heartless, you know.”

“I know. I didn't mean-” Clarke shuts up. She's only going to make all this worse. “Thanks.”

Bellamy shrugs. “You'll be happy to know the blood came off your leather seats okay.”

“You cleaned my car?” Why did Bellamy Blake have to become so endearing and sweet all of a sudden?

“Yeah, well, it would be a crime to let the blood ruin that leather,” Bellamy shoots her a little half smile, but Clarke is feeling a little overwhelmed because it's pretty much the nicest anyone's been to her in a long time. In only a couple of hours, he's managed to take better care of her than her mother has in years. To her horror, Clarke feels tears begin to form in the corners of her eyes.

“Shit.” Bellamy looks frantic. “Please don't cry.”

“I'm sorry,” Clarke hiccups. “This is pretty much the most humiliating experience ever. I don't even know why I'm crying.”

Bellamy moves very tentatively, sitting down on the edge of her bed. “It's not humiliating.”

Clarke lets out a watery laugh. “Of course it is! I get drunk at my parents benefits and I have no one to call to take me home and I have panic attacks and, again, no one to call. I bleed all over the seats of my car and drunkenly call the older brother of my only friend, who, by the way, is fourteen. And then someone does something remotely nice for me and I start sobbing like a maniac.” Clarke sets the tray on the bed, trying not to spill anything. She probably shouldn't hold liquids while she's having a minor breakdown.

“Clarke.” Bellamy lays a light hand on top of one of hers. “You don't have to be embarrassed about being upset. I raised Octavia her whole life, I've seen more tears than I can count.”

Clarke doesn't exactly mean to, but she turns her hand in his and clutches at him. “It's still embarrassing. You don't even like me.”

Bellamy's cheeks turn a little pink. “That's not true. I just... You don't make a lot of sense to me, Clarke. And I might...” He runs his free hand through his hair. “I might have made some snap judgments.”

Clarke is surprised by his words, but before she has the chance to answer, the sound of her mother's car pulling up in the driveway has Bellamy practically leaping to his feet.

“Shit. I probably shouldn't be in here when your mom checks in.” He takes long strides towards the exit, but pauses at the door. “I... Uh...” He stares at the floor. “If you need someone to talk to, or to talk to you, you know, during in a panic attack, you can call me.” He takes another step away, then stops. “I mean it, Clarke. Call me. Anytime. And eat your lunch, okay?” And then he's gone, closing the door behind him.

Clarke stares at the empty space where Bellamy had been standing only moments before. The guy who'd just been sitting in her room, holding her hand, and trying to cheer her up, that guy seems a lot like the Bellamy that Octavia's told her about. The words _soft, sweet,_ and _kind_ all apply to the guy who made her lunch and cleaned up the blood from her car.

“Clarke?” Her mother only raps on the door once before she steps inside.

“Hi, Mom.”

Abby's eyes slide over her, curled in bed, the tray of food next to her. “Are you ill?”

“No. I'm just- uh, cramps.”

Abby narrows her eyes. “Your period is early?” The fact that her mother knows her menstrual cycle is beyond disturbing to Clarke.

“A little, yeah.”

“Did you change your birth control?”

“Jesus Christ, Mom. A little privacy, please?”

“I accept that you're an adult, Clarke, with an active sex life. I just want to make sure you're taking care of yourself.”

Clarke's headache is worse than ever. “First of all, my sex life isn't exactly active, recently. Second of all, if I want to keep that to myself, I should be allowed to.”

Abby holds up her hands in defeat. “I don't want to argue with you, Clarke. But I'm your mother. I'm always going to try to make sure that you're making good decisions.”

 _Don't I know it_ , Clarke thinks, but she only nods and keeps her mouth shut until her mother leaves again. She takes the painkillers and eats the food Bellamy brought her, which is so good, Clarke's thinking she might call Bellamy just to ask him what the hell he puts in his grilled cheese sandwiches. She falls asleep again after lunch and doesn't wake until there's long shadows across her room. As she sits up, something bright catches her eye and she realizes the tray she'd left on her beside table with the empty dishes has been replaced by a piece of paper. She picks it up.

_I just wanted to check in and make sure you were doing okay. I'm getting Octavia from school. I figured you could use a day off from dance lessons. Get some rest. -B_

To her surprise, she doesn't have any more panic attacks for the next week (not that she's complaining) and she starts hanging around and drawing more while Bellamy works. She's still a little self conscious about how much of a mess she'd been in front of him, but he hasn't brought it up and she assumes that means they aren't going to talk about it. She's perfectly fine with that.

Octavia, on the other hand, is quick to comment. Clarke picks her up from school on Monday and the first thing she says is, “What happened? Bell won't tell me _anything_.”

“You're talking about Wednesday?”

“Of _course_ I'm talking about Wednesday! Bellamy picks me up from school and I ask where you are and he's all 'Clarke is busy. No, you can't call her, it's her business. Don't bother her about this, O.' And I swear when he dropped me off that morning he was grumbling under his breath about you. So what was it?”

Clarke pulls out of the high school parking lot. “I was hungover.”

“And that made Bellamy feel bad for you? I seriously kind of doubt that.”

“I was hungover and highly stressed out. I might have cried.”

Octavia bursts out laughing.

“What?”

“Nothing, sorry!” Octavia is wiping tears of mirth from the corners of her eyes, giggling and gasping for breath. “It's just... I'm picturing my brother's face when you started to cry. Sheer panic?”

Clarke remembers his muttered curse, the frantic look on his face. “Yeah, something like that.”

“I've seen it a few times. It usually makes me feel better just to see how horrified he is,” Octavia admits. “It's like guys have this flight instinct when girls start crying, but then they also have this sort of duty to stay and deal with it and it's hilarious.”

Clarke smiles. “He was nice, after the initial panic.”

“Good. He better have been, or I'll kick his ass.”

“No, he really was.”

Octavia looks at her slyly. “So are you guys friends again?”

“Let's not push it.” But she's thinking about Bellamy's offer to call him if she needs to and she thinks maybe, _maybe_ Octavia has a point.

She gets six solid nights of sleep before she's woken up in the very early morning. Only this time, it's not a nightmare or a panic attack, it's her phone ringing. She fumbles for it in the dark, noting the time on her alarm clock, 4:03 AM.

“Hello?” she mumbles into the phone.

“Clarke?” It's Octavia, her voice quiet and tense.

“Octavia?”

“Clarke, can you come get me?”

“What? What happened? Where are you?”

Octavia sniffs and Clarke wonders if she's been crying. “I really wanted to go to this party and Bellamy said no, so I snuck out. But now my ride is too drunk to drive and she's just gonna crash here and I need to get home, so she let me borrow her cell phone to call someone and I don't want to call Bell.”

Clarke sighs, but is already climbing out of bed, grabbing a sweatshirt and a pair of shoes. “Okay. Where are you? I'm on my way.”

The party is out a good forty minute drive from Clarke's house, so she cranks up her stereo to keep herself from falling back to sleep on the drive. Octavia is waiting out front, looking sheepish. She climbs into Clarke's car silently and the two are quiet, save for the directions Octavia gives Clarke to her apartment.

“Are you mad?” Octavia ventures finally, quietly.

“No.” Clarke shrugs. “It's not my job to be mad at you. Teenagers break rules. It's what they do. I did, anyway.”

Clarke pulls up in front of the apartment and kills the engine. “You did the right thing, calling someone to come get you,” she says.

“Bellamy is gonna be mad.” Octavia glances at the apartment complex apprehensively.

“Yeah, I'd expect so.” She doesn't want to, but she feels like she has to offer. “Do you want me to come up?”

“No!” Octavia practically yelps. “Sorry, no. It's just, Bellamy won't like it if you do. He'll already be mad and then he'll probably take it out on you too.”

“Okay. See you on Monday?”

“Yeah...” Octavia says slowly. She looks reluctant, but then pushes open the car door and climbs out. Clarke waits until she's inside the building to drive away.

She's not that surprised when Bellamy's attitude is practically icy the next day. Still, like he always seems to do, it gets under her skin. It's not like _she_ snuck Octavia out to go to a party. Literally all she'd done was deliver his sister home. But she can tell Bellamy doesn't see it that way and the third time he brushes past her with a scathing, _Princess_ , she's had it.

“Okay, no.” She grabs his arm and swings him around. “Let's have it, then. Because I'm done with your passive aggressive behavior. Say what you want to say.”

Bellamy glares at her. “You shouldn't have picked up Octavia!”

“That's ridiculous. She needed a ride to get _home_ and she asked me for one. I wasn't about to leave her there.”

“She would have called me,” Bellamy grits out. “If you'd said no, she would have called me. I don't need you _aiding_ and abetting her rebellious stage.”

“And what if she didn't? What if she didn't want to face you, so she stayed there and something bad happened? Then that would be on _me_ . If you think for _one second_ , Bellamy Blake, that your pride is more important to me than Octavia's _safety_ , then you don't know me at all!” She spins on her heel and stalks away, taking deep, calming breaths, but there's a bit of satisfaction in feeling that she at least won the argument.

That feeling doesn't last as long, because she wakes up that night, gasping for air and shaking and drowning in the silence. And even through the panic, she hates that she's dialing _his_ number because she's still mad at him and he's probably still mad at her and it's probably a terrible idea all the way around. But she calls him anyway.

He answers on the third ring, sounding groggy. “Clarke?”

“Bell- I'm- I can't-”

“-Hey, Princess, breathe. It's okay. Tell me what you need.” His voice goes all gentle and calm and soothing.

“Just- Just talk. P-please?” The sound of his voice is bringing the rest of the world back, something other than loss and silence and too much blood.

“Okay, okay.” And he launches immediately in to speaking. It's not until Clarke has calmed down slightly, that she realizes he's giving her a detailed account of the fall of the Roman Empire. It surprises her, though she doesn't know why. She doesn't actually know Bellamy well enough to know what sort of things he's into, she just wouldn't have guessed this. Her breath evens out and she lies back in her pillows listening to him talk. She's okay now, but she doesn't want to interrupt him because there's a certain fervor in his voice that is fascinating and she's starting to wonder what the end of the story will be. Does he even have a place to stop? Bellamy falls momentarily silent and she can tell if she doesn't interrupt, he'll start speaking again.

“Thanks,” she says softly. “I didn't know you like history.”

“Uh, yeah. It was kind of... I mean, we had a bunch of these old history books in my house growing up, but Ancient Rome and Greece were always my favorites.” It's like this whole experience has caught him off guard. He's open, saying things she's sure she would never be able to get out of him during the day. She wishes she could catch him like that more often.

“You were one of those kids who actually liked school, weren't you?”

“Yeah.” His voice is wistful. “But I had to drop out to take care of O and my mom, so...” He's clearly masking the emotion in his voice, but Clarke can't help but feel sad. He might not know it, but Clarke knows all about what he'd had to give up, what he'd had to do. She tries not to picture him letting his stepfather hit him, so that his mother and O are safe, or hiking through the woods at night, moving drugs. Bellamy's bright, that much is clear, smart and hard working and he's probably one of those kids who could have made it out of bad situation and gone to college, given slightly different circumstances. She understands why Octavia feels responsible for where he is, for what he's done.

“Clarke?” She realizes she's fallen silent, imagining him as he should have been allowed to be.

“Yes?”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“No, but I should go and let you get some.” She swallows. “Thanks for... you know.”

“I meant it, Clarke. Anytime.”

Clarke smiles to herself. “Goodnight, Bellamy.”

“Night, Princess.”

They don't talk about it when they see each other the next day. Clarke is grateful. It's easier to keep calling him, which she does, when it's ignored during waking hours. It's easier to know that he's aware of her most closely guarded secret, her _weakness_ , when he acts as if he is not. Even Octavia, who Clarke would consider herself much closer to, has never experienced one of her panic attacks. That's something unique to Bellamy. She wouldn't call it friendship, exactly, but it's something.

Clarke's made a bit of a point not to run in to people she knows from high school, mostly because not very many of them liked her and she's pretty sure _all_ of them heard about what happened to Wells, so the prospect of conversation with any of them is not appealing. She gets lucky on who she finally does come in contact with.

She's picking out yogurt in the organic section of the grocery store when someone says her name. She turns around and sees Monty Green standing a few feet away, looking a little unsure, but much the same as ever. Clarke never knew Monty that well, but he'd been her lab partner in AP Chemistry her junior year of high school and he is certainly brilliant.

“Hey,” she responds, glad that if she has to see someone, it's Monty.

“I didn't know you were back in town,” Monty says. “Jasper– you remember Jasper, right? He's been doing this tech internship with your mother's campaign office. I'm surprised he didn't mention you were around.”

Clarke shrugs weakly. “My mom probably isn't announcing it. She's not exactly happy that I've taken a year off.” She can see, once she says it, on Monty's face that he knows all about Wells. Of course he does. This whole _town_ knows all about Wells. It's not all that often that the mayor's son is brutally murdered.

“I would need like three years off if I did a year of med school,” is all he says, though. He's being kind. Monty is a genius. He could probably do med school no problem, unless he has a problem with bodily functions or something. Clarke sends him a grateful smile, one that says, 'thank you for not bringing up my dead best friend and the real reason I'm here instead of there.'

“Thanks.”

“Well, I'm sure you have better things to do than talk to some guy from high school in the dairy section of the grocery store, but message me on facebook if you wanna come to movie night or something with my friends. I know a lot of your friends aren't in town, since it's the school year. We have them on Saturdays.” Monty gives her a little wave and heads off. Clarke wonders if he's serious about the invitation. It's an understatement to say 'a lot of your friends aren't in town,' but Monty's kind and would never say, 'I know you don't _have_ any friends,' so he might really mean it. She could use more friends. She could use _any_ friends, really.

All things considered, she's got a good schedule down with Octavia that's keeping her busy and physically tired. She and Bellamy aren't screaming at each other during the day and he's actually being quite supportive at night. And she may have had the luck to run in to the one person from high school who would genuinely invite her to hang out, even though they don't really know each other. Maybe, at last, things are looking up.

 


	3. It's You That Burns

 

“ _'Cause all I see, girl, is in technicolor_

_and it's you that burns brightest of all._

_You turn away, look again, your face is_

_reflected in the sweat on the walls.”_

 

The phone call comes on a Friday afternoon. Not a lot of people call him. Sometimes he gets a call from O, when she has a change in plans and needs to let him know. Occasionally, Miller, who lives three blocks over and works at the bar Bellamy occasionally escapes to, gives him a call and the two of them drink beer and eat pizza and watch football. At night, Clarke calls and he talks non-stop until she can take full, deep breaths, and sometimes longer than that. This time, it's his mother.

Aurora sounds weaker and older than he's ever heard her. She's only forty, but life isn't kind to people where he's from. He hasn't heard her voice in the two years since he and O took off. He didn't expect to hear her ever again. Her breath is heavy on the end of the line, but her words weigh more.

“Baby, I... It's gotten pretty bad. I don't think there's much time left.” She's means for her. She means in her life. Bellamy clenches his jaw and tries not to imagine her, curled up in the big, mud brown chair with the stuffing escaping the arms.

“I know...” Aurora coughs and gasps, then composes herself. “I know your sister can't ever come back here, but Bellamy, I want to see you again, just one last time. Won't you come say goodbye to me, Baby?”

He wants to scream, _no_. He wants to tell her that he's spent the last two years trying to shed the ghosts that cling to his skin. That he'd said goodbye to her the first time, and never expected to know when she finally gave up and slipped away. He wants to tell her that he's got a life here, or he's trying to, and he can't just walk back into that mess he'd run away from. But he doesn't.

“Yeah, Mom. I'll come.”

He waits until Octavia gets home from dance with Clarke to tell her about his trip. He doesn't say where he's going, but she knows.

“You'll be okay until Sunday afternoon, right?”

“I'll be fine, Bell.”

“I got a you a prepaid phone.” He hands it to her, watching her face light up. “Don't get used to it. It's just for emergencies. If you need something fast, call Clarke.”

“You should go out of town more often,” Octavia teases, though it doesn't reach her eyes.

“It's just for _emergencies_ , O. Don't bother Clarke because you want someone to paint your toenails or something, okay?” He would have told her to call Miller, but Miller has work and doesn't actually know Octavia as well as Clarke does.

“I know, I know.”

“There's a casserole in the fridge, don't forget to eat.”

“I'm a high school student, not a cat, Bell.”

He sighs. “I know. I'll be back Sunday. Stay out of trouble,” he tells her, dropping a kiss on top of her head before he goes.

He drives straight through, no stopping, and makes it back by 1 AM, car idling in front of the log cabin he thought he'd never see again. He knows some of the town saw his truck pass through. He knows his name will be everywhere by morning. It's only for a day and half. He can do this.

The door isn't locked. He doesn't expect it to be. Willie's customers come and go at all times, so the house is always open. His mom is dozing in the chair in the living room, just as he'd imagined. She's smaller than he remembered and he doesn't know if that's because his memory is warped, or if she's shrinking as the illness takes her, withering away.

He kneels next to her chair, resting a hand on her arm. “Mom?”

Her eyes blink blearily open. “Bellamy,” she breathes, a hand coming up to cup his cheek. She's fragile, from her delicate skin to her vulnerable eyes.

“Hi, Mom.” He settles on the sofa that's next to her armchair. He doesn't know what to say. She's the only one here he wants to know anything about, but she's said it all, really, she's dying. The front door swings open and it's none other than Willie Stephenson himself, stomping into the house before he sees Bellamy and freezes.

“So, you're back, then?” Willie growls.

“Not for long.”

“And your sister?” _Your sister_ , he says, not _my daughter_ , which Octavia is. But then, Willie's never been a father to Octavia.

“Not here.” And he certainly won't be telling Willie anything more on that front, but he doesn't ask. Instead, he just shrugs and continues towards the back of the house.

“Don't get in the way, boy.”

Bellamy sinks back into the couch with a sigh. It's weird to see Willie and not feel any fear. He's hated Willie a lot more than he's feared him for a long time, but he never thought all the fear would be gone. This is a man who's beaten him since childhood, but he just looks lost and sad to Bellamy now. Maybe that's a product of getting out, of seeing a world where people aren't trapped or drugged or sick, men like Willie lose their ferocity.

His phone starts ringing. He's going to ignore it, because he came here to see his mom and he's hardly gotten more than two words out so far, but when he glances at it, Clarke's name is staring back at him. Shit. He can't leave her crying and unable to breathe. He'd told her any time. He takes the call.

Clarke is practically incoherent, getting out a few syllables that sound like maybe they're supposed to be his name. His stomach twists up. He hates hearing Clarke like this.

“Hey, hey. It's okay.” He doesn't know how many times he's done this now. “I'm here. You're okay, Clarke. I've got you.” He keeps talking, this time he goes for mythology. He knows it doesn't really matter what he says, it's about hearing his voice, knowing there are other people out there, that she's not alone. He's gotten quite adept at figuring out when she's calmed down, as well, so eventually, when he can no longer hear her sniffling, he wraps up the story.

“Better?” he asks.

“Yeah...” her voice is quiet, the way she always gets after, raw, but gentle. “Thanks, Bell.”

“Always. Night, Princess.” He hangs up and finds his mother watching him with oddly clear eyes. He swallows, uncomfortable with the look.

“Who's your princess?” Aurora asks, a smile on her lips. _His princess_ , Bellamy pushes the thought away. Of course it would sound like that to someone who doesn't know.

“She's no one.”

“Now, I know I raised my boy not to lie to his mother,” Aurora says, mock sternly. Bellamy shifts a little, trying to think how to even begin to explain Clarke, what they are and aren't to each other. It doesn't really make sense, even to him.

“I mean, it's nothing,” he can feel his cheeks heating up. “I work for her family, is all. She gets panic attacks, so sometimes she calls me.”

“You care about her.”

Bellamy rubs at the back of his neck. “I don't- I mean, she just doesn't have anybody, really. And I'm around, you know, because of work and she's giving O dance lessons, so it's just...” he's not making this any better, stumbling around and trying to explain his relationship, or lack thereof, with Clarke when he's got no idea exactly what it is. He knows a lot about her, these days, from the nights when her panic attack abates, but she's too lonely to sleep and she wants to keep talking.

Aurora leans over and pats his cheek. “It's okay, Baby. I know a lost boy when I see one.”

“What does that even _mean_?”

“You'll figure it out, don't worry.” It must be her pain meds talking, Bellamy decides. She doesn't know what she's saying and that's why her words burrow deep under his skin and make him squirm. Aurora gets shakily to her feet and Bellamy leaps up to help her.

“I'm glad you came, Baby, but I need to get some sleep.”

“Of course. You shouldn't have waited up for me.” He helps her to the back bedroom, the one with the powder and the needles, so he's careful. Willie is gone. He must have gone out the back some time. He helps his mother into bed, tucking her in like she used to when he was young. His heart aches. His mother's been broken as long as he can remember, but this is different. She's slipping away.

“Goodnight, Mom.”

“Goodnight, Baby.”

He sleeps on the couch. He'd made the decision, the moment the house had loomed in to view, to not set foot in his and Octavia's old bedroom. He doesn't want to see it. He imagines no one's touched it in the two years he's been gone. Willie has more house than he needs and he mostly just fills it with junk. At best, everything will be covered in a layer of dust. At worst, he'll find one of Willie's customers crashed out in there. It's not worth the emotional turmoil.

He settles down on the sofa. It smells like mold, something sweet, and pot. It makes him feel like a little boy all over again, awake in the house he'd been dying to get out of. He doesn't know what good he can do here. It's going to feel a lot crappier to leave his mother this time around. She's fucking _dying_ and he's supposed to just disappear again? But he has to, because Octavia can't come here and he can't leave her and he hates all of this.

He wakes up when the sun is just starting to rise, weak morning light hitting the filthy windows, little bits of it breaking into the living room. He can't hear Willie snoring, which means his stepdad is awake, or not home. Bellamy hopes it's the second. There's almost nothing in the fridge, some expired milk and a jar of pickles. He wonders what his mother's been eating. He wonders if she _has_ been eating.

He throws out the milk and takes out the trash, which is overflowing. He'll have to go to the grocery store. He knows, unless his mother has changed a lot, that Aurora won't be up for hours, so he certainly has time. It'll mean he has to face the community he left behind, but his mother needs food. The local market is close enough to walk, so he does. No point wasting gas, particularly now that he's about to buy a houseful of groceries for a house that isn't his. He can't afford it, but it's not a choice, so he pushes the calculations of what he'll have to skimp on when he gets back to the back of his brain. He'll deal with it later.

Murphy is working the cash register at the store, still a mess of gangly limbs and stringy hair and dark eyes. Bellamy nods to him when he walks in, ignoring the way he stares. It's just for a day. They can stare as much as they like. He buys the best food he can afford, trying to swallow down the anger that Willie and his friends will probably raid the fridge as soon as they realize there's something edible there.

Aurora still isn't awake when he gets back, so he makes coffee and eggs and toast and bacon. There aren't food trays in his house like there are in Clarke's, so he piles it all on a plate and balances two cups of coffee and heads to the back bedroom. He's right, Willie isn't there. Aurora wakes up as he approaches the bed. She's a light sleeper. You have to be when you live in a house where Willie could fly into a rage at any time.

“I made breakfast,” he tells her, keeping his voice light, even though she's struggling just to sit up and her hands are shaking. He places the coffee on the nightstand, and balances the plate between them, handing his mother silverware.

“How's Octavia?” Aurora asks, as she fumbles with her utensils.

“Too old,” Bellamy answers around a mouthful of toast. “She started high school. She's getting good grades. I'm saving to send her to college. She'll end up the best of us.”

“I'm so proud of you, Baby.”

Bellamy ducks his head. He's never been good with praise. Sure, there's a warm feeling that spreads out in his chest, but mostly it just makes him want to turn invisible. He absorbs it, though, because he's becoming distinctly aware that this is the last of it he'll hear from her.

Because Aurora is weak and sleeps a lot, Bellamy spends most of the day cleaning. The house is a mess. He starts with the back bedroom, since Willie is still out, carefully gathering up the discarded needles and empty drug bags. They own an old washing machine, but no dryer, so he runs the washer like crazy and hikes out back to inspect the state of the clothes lines. They aren't great, sagging in the middle and the wood posts rotting. He fixes them up, tightening the lines and finding the least rotten places to hammer in more nails. He hangs up the first load of laundry and starts in on the second. It takes all morning just to get all the trash cleaned up. He leaves the door to his old room closed. That room can rot for all he cares, but the rest of the house he sweeps up. The house really needs a deep clean, but that would take days, which he doesn't have.

When Aurora wakes up again, he helps her into the living room and they drink tea. They don't talk as much as people would expect them to, but that's always been their way. When life is harsh and cruel, it's better not to speak of it. When they do talk, it's mostly about Octavia. It's the only topic that is simply happy. He puts his mother to bed after dinner and decides to risk a local bar. Seeing Aurora opens old wounds, ones that have only just finished scabbing over, and he's not sure he'll get through it without a drink.

They stare when he comes in, all the old men and boys who've grown into men in his absence, people he's known his entire life. They stare like they didn't watch him go from an adventurous little boy, to a defiant teenager, to a sullen young man. He's spent more years here than away, but people don't leave this town and he has, so he's become something strange and almost notorious.

He drinks until it's late and his head is spinning. He drinks some more. Eventually, things are fuzzy enough to forget for a few moments at a time that he's here because his mother is dying. He doesn't know what time it is when Dax comes into the bar. Bellamy's hated him most of his life, this boy with cruel eyes and fast fists. He'd be content to ignore him, though, if it weren't for Dax's mouth.

He knows that Dax will spout whatever foul thing comes to mind in search of a good fight, but it's been too long since Bellamy's let his rage take over and gotten to land a few punches. If Dax had gone for an insult about Bellamy, it still wouldn't have been enough, but he doesn't. He goes for Aurora, quickly followed by Octavia and that's it.

Then there's smashed glasses and split knuckles and blood on the floor. On a good day, Bellamy's pretty confident he could take Dax, but today isn't a good day. Today, he's countless drinks in and Dax is dead sober, so the fight doesn't last long and when it's over, a couple of men dump Bellamy out on the cracked sidewalk, bleeding and barely conscious.

He doesn't know how he makes it back to the cabin, how he gets up the steps, but he manages it somehow, and he collapses onto the couch. He's almost completely out of it when his phone starts vibrating. He fumbles for it, but it slips out of his fingers and lands with a dull thump on the floor. It's Clarke. He's reaching for it, his vision coming and going, thinking he has to answer, he has to help her. That's the last thing he remembers before he falls asleep.

He wakes up with the worst hangover of his life and it takes him a few moments to realize that it's not just his head that's hurting. He stumbles to the bathroom and winces at what he sees in the mirror. He's got a black eye and his jaw is swollen and the rest of his body is a map of cuts and bruises. He washes his tender face as best he can, then shuffles into the kitchen to make breakfast. It seems Willie hasn't noticed the groceries yet, at least. He plans to leave after breakfast with his mother.

It's a testament to the life he's had that Aurora barely blinks when she sees the damage that's been done to him. She takes the plate he hands to her.

“Who was it?”

“Dax. Bar fight.” Bellamy shrugs, then regrets it instantly and stops. He aches all over.

“I hope you don't fight in your new home,” Aurora frets.

“I don't have to,” he responds, a hand going to his tender ribs.

“I'm glad. I'm so happy for you, you know? You and Octavia got out and that's all I wanted.”

“You could come back with me.” Bellamy offers desperately. How is he supposed to just leave his dying mother here?

“You know I couldn't and I won't.” He knew she would reply that way. His mother may have always said this isn't his world, but it is hers, the only one she's ever known. She won't leave it, no matter what he wishes.

“I have to get back to Octavia,” he says quietly.

“Yes. You should go.” Aurora's smile is genuine. Bellamy stands up, wincing as his body protests. He's halfway to the door, not planning on looking back again, but his mother's voice stops him.

“Be good to your princess, Bell.” He stops himself from turning to look at her. He stops himself from responding, from correcting her, but he's suddenly remembering his last waking moments last night.

He waits until he's sitting in his truck to pull out his phone. 3 missed calls. All from Clarke. He leans his forehead against the steering wheel and breathes. He's pretty familiar with the feeling of self loathing, but it still makes it difficult to breathe for a few moments. He starts the truck. He can't do anything here.

Unlike Aurora, Octavia flinches when she sees him. “Bell!” She's next to him in a second. “What happened?”

He tries to wave her away. “It was just Dax. I've had worse.”

“You lie down right this instant!” Octavia demands, steering him towards his room. She disappears for a few moments and returns with an ice pack and a bag of frozen peas. She scampers away again and Bellamy closes his eyes and tries to relax. There are very few parts of his body that don't hurt. Even so, he falls asleep.

“Holy shit.” He wakes up to Clarke Griffin standing over him with wide eyes and a bag in one hand. For a moment, he thinks he's dreaming.

“What the hell _happened_?” Clarke asks. He's still not sure what Clarke Griffin is doing in his bedroom, so if words fail him, he can't really be blamed.

“Bellamy?”

“I- Uh. Bar fight,” he says, finally. Clarke bites her lip, eyes sliding over every inch of him.

“Okay, up.”

“What?”

“Get up. I'm gonna need more light than this, so we'll have to go to the kitchen.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” His frustration is building. All he wants to do is sleep and forget the pain radiating throughout his body and that he just spent the last two days with his mother, who he's never going to see again.

Clarke holds up the bag. “I'm making sure you don't need to go to the emergency room. Now let's go.”

“I'm fine,” he argues.

“Well, that's crap. Come on.” She holds out a hand. He stares at it for several moments before coming to the conclusion that Clarke isn't going to leave unless he does as she asks. Standing up hurts. A lot. He grumbles as he shuffles into the kitchen, Clarke trailing him. Octavia is sitting at the kitchen table and he gives her a glare.

“I said call Clarke in case of _emergency_ ,” he tells her. Somewhere between waking up and now, he's remembered Clarke's missed phone calls and the guilt is heavy in his chest, but he doesn't know how to approach the topic, because they never mention the calls outside of being on the phone, so he decides it's best not to bring it up.

Octavia crosses her arms. “Yeah, I got that.”

Clarke ignores both of them and pulls out a chair. “Sit,” she demands. He does as he's told and Clarke starts unpacking her bag onto the table. It contains a lot of familiar things, gauze, bandaids, isopropyl, ankle wraps, etc. There's also quite a few things he doesn't recognize that are vaguely ominous.

“Okay,” Clarke says, once she's all set up. Then she starts with his head and works her way down, patching cuts and asking questions, poking and prodding, and generally touching a lot more of him than he ever thought she would under circumstances very different from how he might have dreamed them. He winces when she gets to his ribs, cursing under his breath. Clarke hums in the back of her throat but doesn't say anything. She eventually gets to his hands, one of which is pretty messed up, then his legs, which are mostly intact.

“Take off your shirt,” she tells him.

“What?”

“Judging by your reactions, your ribs are probably the worst. I need better access.”

He's suddenly thinking about how his mother had said, _your princess_ , which is a stupid, irrelevant thing to be thinking about as he slowly, painfully, tugs his shirt off. From the look on Clarke's face, things aren't good, but he doesn't look down to check. She moves in again, her hand sliding over his skin and applying pressure here and there, watching his reaction.

“I don't think you've broken any ribs, but I'm pretty sure they're deeply bruised.”

“Fantastic,” Bellamy growls.

“On the bright side, you aren't showing any signs of a concussion. It's really your hand and your ribs that are the worst. Everything else should heal pretty quickly.”

“Does this mean I can go back to bed?”

Clarke rolls her eyes, but moves to help him up. He's stiff, but he makes it back to his room okay. Clarke sits down on the edge of the bed, giving him instructions that he pays very little attention to.

“I'll just be out on the couch if you need anything.”

“Excuse me?”

“I'm not going to _leave_ tonight. You're a mess.”

“You can't sleep on the couch. It'll kill your back,” Bellamy protests. He can't believe Clarke Griffin is suggesting she's going to stay _here_ , in his shitty apartment that's probably the least expensive place she's ever even stood in.

“Then I'll share with Octavia.”

He's not sure how to argue with that, so he keeps his mouth shut. Clarke doesn't move, just sits there, chewing on her bottom lip.

“You didn't do anything really stupid, did you?” she asks.

“I told you, it was a bar fight.”

“I know, I just... Nevermind.”

He shouldn't bring it up, but... “I'm sorry I didn't answer when you called.” His voice comes out a lot smaller and a lot more guilty than he meant it to.

Clarke's face goes very soft. “Bell, you don't have to apologize for that. Look at you, you had other things going on, clearly.” Clarke shrugs. “Besides, after a couple minutes of freaking out, I just started thinking about what you'd say if I could talk to you, how you'd probably go on and on about Augustus for _ages_ and it helped. It took longer, but it helped.”

“That's because Augustus was a badass,” he grumbles, but he feels her words in his chest, warm and swelling. Clarke laughs, and before he even knows what's happening, she presses a kiss to his cheek, then stands up.

“Goodnight, Bell.”

She's already left the room, door closed behind her, before he finds his voice. “Night, Princess,” he whispers, fingertips resting where her lips had been a moment before.

He wakes up once during the night, his ribs burning. He can hear Octavia and Clarke talking in low tones in the living room, but he can't quite make out the words. At least, not until the air cuts off and suddenly their voices are clear.

“-didn't say, but it was to see Mom, I'm sure,” Octavia says. “I think she must not be doing well.”

“And your dad's still-”

“-cooking, dealing, taking drugs? Yeah, I would assume so.” Octavia told Clarke about that? He wonders what else she knows. He wonders which of his secrets have been bared to her.

“You think it was really him, who beat up Bell?”

“Maybe. He'll never tell.”

“You guys are amazing,” Clarke says quietly. “I'd never come out of something like that gracefully.”

“It wasn't me, it was more-” He falls asleep before he can hear the rest of Octavia's answer. He dreams about castles filled with fog and lonely princesses in towers. When he wakes up, he can't remember the dreams at all.

He finds Clarke in the living room, cross-legged on the sofa, eating a popsicle and watching reruns of Lost. Since he doesn't keep popsicles in the apartment, he has no idea where it came from.

“What time is it?”

“Almost eleven.”

“ _What_?” His head snaps up. “I was supposed to take Octavia to school! I have work! You can't just-”

“-Calm down and stop being such a drama queen. Octavia is at school, I dropped her off this morning. You _don't_ have work because your hand is incredibly fucked up and your ribs are no walk in the park either and you won't be working for the rest of the week.”

“Clarke,” Bellamy almost scrubs a hand across his face, but remembers his swollen jaw just in time. “I _have_ to work. I can't afford to take time off.”

“Which,” Clarke finishes the popsicle and stands up, crossing her arms, “is why I told my dad I was borrowing you to help me with a project for the week. You're still getting paid, so relax, and come watch some TV with me.”

“I'm not a charity case.” Blakes don't accept hand outs.

Clarke heaves out a sigh. “This isn't _charity_ , Bell. You can't work. That's a fact. _I_ want to have several TV marathons and eat lots of junk food and I am _hiring_ you to get your butt over here and _pretend_ to be my friend. There. Problem solved.”

“Clarke.”

“Did you think this was a negotiation? Because it's not. Also, I hid your car keys.”

“Fuck, Clarke. This is serious.”

“I'm _being_ serious.” She pats the seat next to her. “Sit.”

His ribs really do hurt. He shifts from foot to foot until he can swallow enough pride to sit next to her. He doesn't make eye contact. He's not going to watch her win.

An hour later, he's forgotten he's supposed to be irritated. They'd ordered pizza and are now having a heated argument about which Lost death was the most horrific. Clarke is convinced it's Charlie, while Bellamy argues Alex 100%. Clarke gives him some painkillers and they must be pretty strong, because they make him loopy and his words sloppy. He's half convinced she did it to win the argument. They're in between episodes and Clarke is fiddling with the controls to get the next one up and he just blurts it out.

“My mom is dying.”

Clarke turns to him slowly. “What?”

“That's why I went back. To say goodbye. I would've brought Octavia, but she can't go back there.”

“Bell, you have to tell her.”

He shakes his head, but it makes the world spin, so he stops. “It's not like we'll ever know exactly when it happens, anyway. Willie sure as hell isn't going to tell us.”

Clarke looks conflicted. It probably has to do with her trying to figure how much she's supposed to 'know' in front of him. It doesn't matter. Aside from Octavia, Clarke's the person in this life that's seen the most of him, which makes her kind of terrifying, but also incredibly comforting.

“I know Octavia told you about our childhood.”

“Not everything,” Clarke says quietly. “But the gist of it, yeah.”

“I had to clean up used needles in my mother's bedroom. Willie leaves them fucking everywhere.” He feels tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “Mom used to use too. I wasn't supposed to know, but fuck, I'd seen strung out people my whole life. I knew it when she was fucked up too. It's how she got sick. I don't think Octavia knows.”

“Bell.” She tugs on him and he's not sure how it happens, the world is kind of slippery and slow, like molasses, but somehow he's lying on the sofa with his head in Clarke's lap. She runs her fingers through his hair, gentle and soothing.

“I just wanted to tell somebody,” he tries to explain. “I just wanted someone else to know.”

“Okay.”

“We didn't even talk that much. I feel like I should have talked to her more. I didn't tell her I loved her, either. I should have done that, but I just...” He turns his head and presses his face into Clarke's leg, scrunching his eyes up to fight the tears.

“You went back for her, Bellamy. She knew.”

“She and I were never talkers like Octavia. She didn't say much to me either.”

Clarke's fingers are still slipping through his hair and he's sleepy and sad and confused. “She told me to be good to you,” he whispers. “That's the last thing she said.” He's thinking about Clarke dressed up for her mom's benefit and the leather interior of Clarke's car and words he'd said to Octavia, _girls like Clarke don't date guys like me_ and then to his mother, _she's no one_. He's thinking about how he doesn't get to have Clarke Griffin, and how there's something in his chest that's saying maybe he wishes he did.

“I'd try,” he says, sinking into darkness. “I would try.”

He protests minimally over the rest of the week. Or, at least, he would call it minimal. Clarke might have a different opinion, but she gets her way, so he figures she doesn't have a lot of room to complain. She drops off and picks up Octavia from school. She is a drill sergeant about how he manages even the tiniest cut, regaling him with horror stories of infected wounds. She checks on his hand and his ribs constantly he'd probably find it irritating if it weren't for the fact that's he's become painfully aware that he has the world's biggest crush on Clarke.

Everything from the way she scrunches up her nose when she disagrees with him, to her tendency towards lecture when she feels he's doing something he hasn't been “cleared” for, to the easy happy way Clarke and Octavia sling their arms around each other and laugh, has him thinking what it would be like if his mother wasn't wrong, _his princess_. But Bellamy isn't an idiot. Clarke's going through a rough time, that's the only reason they're even in the same social hemisphere. Not that Clarke is arrogant or stuck up or unkind, only that she exists in a world that is not his. He knows this.

On Saturday, Clarke wakes him up from a late afternoon nap, chattering about extra seating and ice cream flavors. He has no idea what she's talking about. He sits up, ribs still protesting, but the rest of him feels a hell of a lot better.

“What the hell are you talking about, Clarke?”

“I told you last night!”

“You mean after you made me take the pain medicine? Because you know how I get.”

Clarke pouts. “We're having people over for movie night!”

“Excuse me? What people?”

“I ran in to this guy from high school in the grocery store and he invited me to movie night with him and his friends and I've been going for like a month now. But tonight I told them to come here. Oh, and I called Miller and invited him too. I think Octavia might be bringing a friend from school.”

“Let me get this straight,” Bellamy says, annoyance and a frustrating amount of affection rising in the back of his throat. “You invited a bunch of people to my apartment without asking me. You somehow contacted and invited a friend of mine, who I'm pretty fucking sure I've never told you about, to come as well. _And_ you let Octavia invite a friend from school.”

Clarke thinks for a moment. “Yeah, that's pretty much right.”

“You're actually fucking unbelievable. I'm going to strangle you one day.” But the venom just won't stay in his voice and Clarke doesn't even blink, just smiles and nods like he's five years old and saying something cute.

“Sure you will, Bell. Now about the extra seating,” and she's off again and Bellamy watches her flit around trying to make everything perfect and isn't sure if he feels like laughing or crying with how much he likes her.

Movie night is at eight and people trickle in slowly. First Monty, who Clarke introduces as her Chemistry lab partner from high school. Next Monty's best friend, Jasper, who's got goggles on the top of his head for some inexplicable reason. Monroe shows up with chips and dip, which Clarke immediately adds to the platter of junk food she's set up that spans his kitchen. Miller next, which is a relief for Bellamy, finally a face he knows. Then Lexa, who's beautiful and glares at Bellamy the moment she walks into the room and seems to take an instant disliking to him. Then Maya, who, in contrast to Lexa, smiles at everybody and causes Jasper to drop his cup of water, blushing fiercely. And finally, O shows, dragging a boy behind her who looks like this is probably the last place he wants to be, who she introduces as Atom.

What the fuck sort of name is Atom? Bellamy stews a little bit about this, especially after he finds out Atom is a 17 year old Junior.

“Stare a little harder, Bell, maybe his head will explode.” Clarke nudges him over on the couch and curls her legs up under her, resting her head on his shoulder, handing him a soda. He is not used to touchy affectionate Clarke, which is apparently who she becomes once she decides you're trustworthy. Somewhere in the past week, this has extended to include him. It's not helping his crush any.

“He's 17.” He glances over to where everyone is loading up the paper plates Clarke had set out with food, chatting and laughing. Atom is in line behind his sister, nodding while she talks.

“And Octavia's about to turn 15. That's less than a three year age difference.”

“Octavia is too young for boys.”

Clarke snorts.

“What?” he demands.

“Are you honestly telling me you were a virgin at 15?”

“My life has nothing to do with it!” His heart stops. “Are you trying to tell me that Octavia-”

“-Jesus Christ, don't have a heart attack. No. Octavia's virginity remains very much intact, _not_ that I will be a source of information for you on that front any longer. I'm just saying, you don't even want her to have a boy over to movie night and isn't that a little hypocritical of you?”

“It's different with her.”

“Because she's a girl?”

“Because she's my sister.”

“Octavia's smart,” Clarke smiles. “Trust her to make good decisions. Besides, Atom's a nice guy.”

Bellamy glares at his soda. “There are only two types of guys out there, bad boys who'll never treat her right or nice ones who can't protect her.”

“That's ridiculous. You protect her fine and you're nice.”

“I'm not. I'm really not, Clarke.” He needs her to understand this. She's started looking at him like he's so much better than he is. Clarke only rolls her eyes.

“Okay, well, if you're quite done with Bellamy Blake self deprecation hour, I'm going to start the movie.” She doesn't give him time to answer and then the lights are off and everyone's eyes are glued to the tv screen. Clarke is all pressed up against his side, having scooted closer to allow room for Maya and Jasper on the sofa, her legs slung over his lap, leaving him not much choice but to grip them with his hands. Having Clarke's smooth skin in his hands is really fucking distracting. By the time the credits roll, he probably couldn't explain what the plot of the movie was.

Clarke gets up to escort people out, waving or hugging them. Bellamy doesn't pay a lot of attention because his ribs are really hurting and he's trying to remember where Clarke had put the painkillers. He's about to ask her when he realizes that she's not in the apartment. She must have stepped out, though he doesn't know why. He shuffles to the kitchen and nearly runs into Octavia, who's putting the extra drinks into the fridge.

“Do you know where the painkillers are?” he asks.

Octavia shrugs. “Clarke'll know.” A huge yawn escapes his sister. “I'm going to bed. Goodnight, Bell!” He gives her a gentle hug, careful of his ribs, then goes back into the living room to wait for Clarke.

She shows up a couple of minutes later and he opens his mouth to ask about the meds before he catches her expression. She looks a little dazed and concerned, her brow pulled tight.

“Are you okay?” he asks instead. She startles, clearly surprised that he's sitting there. Her expression clears a little.

“Yeah. Uh, I just... Lexa just kissed me.” It's amazing how fast his throat closes up. He hopes his face doesn't look like how he feels, a maelstrom of things he can't begin to describe, other than it feels like losing her. But she's never been his to lose.

“Did you want her to?” he hears himself asking.

Clarke's brow bunches back up. “I... I don't know. I mean, she's hot as hell, totally my type, but she's not... Maybe if it were a different time or if Finn had never happened, but I just...” Clarke shakes her head. Bellamy has no idea what she's talking about or who Finn is, but he's sort of thinking this doesn't sound like Lexa and Clarke are gonna be going out anytime soon.

“So... kind of?” he tries to sum up her attempt at an answer.

“No. I mean, she's attractive and it wasn't bad or anything,I didn't mind, but I didn't really _want_ to kiss her.” Clarke sighs. “And I didn't want to hurt her feelings so I sort of told her you're my boyfriend. I hope that's okay that she thinks that now.”

Bellamy suppresses a grin. “Yeah, it's okay she thinks that.” Clarke sits down next to him, letting out a deep breath. And he's sitting there, looking at her, and he realizes something he probably should have sooner, but he's been a little bit out of it with the medicine.

“You haven't had any panic attacks this week.” He can hear the surprise in his voice, so he knows Clarke hears it too.

She smiles shyly. “Nope. The first one I ever had my roommate thought I was dying or something. One day I'm bouncing around like the happiest idiot on Earth blabbering on about my _fantastic_ boyfriend and then the next I'm a total mess.”

“Because of Wells?”

“Oh, no,” Clarke looks surprised. “I guess I thought I already told you about all this... Sometimes I forget you don't know everything I've said to Octavia.”

Bellamy feels vaguely jealous that his sister knows all of Clarke Griffin's history when he's only got little pieces. “What happened?” he asks.

“The panic attacks about Wells came later. They only got really bad after he... after that. The first one I had was after I walked in on my boyfriend, Finn, cheating on me, and _then_ I found out he wasn't cheating _on_ me, he was cheating _with_ me. He and Raven had been together for years. I kind of lost it.”

“Shit.” It doesn't adequately convey what he wants to say, which is something along the lines of ' _Anyone who cheats on you is a complete and total moron who deserves to rot in the deepest depths of Hell.'_

Clarke gets a small smile. “Yeah, but then Raven and I both dumped him and slept together, so you know, he ended up with the shitty end of the deal. She was a way better kisser than him anyway. I mean, that was a one time thing. I'm pretty sure she was just experimenting and super pissed, but still. Last I heard she's in this super serious relationship with some guy named Kyle or something.”

“Yeah, you definitely didn't already tell me this story.” Bellamy informs her in a mock stern tone. He's feeling much more relaxed now that he's pretty sure he isn't going to have to watch Clarke be all coupley with Lexa.

“Octavia thought it was funny,” Clarke tells him.

“Yeah, about that, please refrain from telling my sister stories that encourage her to sleep with anyone, and particularly to sleep with someone as revenge for something someone else has done. I mean, _I_ appreciate the end of that story, but I'd rather she didn't follow in your footsteps there.”

Clarke laughs. “You know, she's not going to be a pure little virgin forever,” she informs him.

Bellamy puts his hands over his ears. “What was that? I can't hear you.”

“You are actually the biggest dork ever,” Clarke says, but he's pretty sure that's affection in her tone.

He starts work again on Monday, which is actually a bit of a relief because spending every waking moment with Clarke Griffin makes it a lot harder for him not to just kiss her. Plus, work reminds him of another reason that he and Clarke are a very bad idea. Besides the fact that she's insanely vulnerable at the moment, _he works for her family_ . Somehow, that fact has managed to slip his mind over the past week. A relationship with Clarke would put his _job_ in jeopardy and, in turn, Octavia. So he really can't act on any of these feelings. But he doesn't account for the fact that his work days are now spent around newly affectionate Clarke.

It's not that she does anything inappropriate. It's just Clarke seems to always be touching him. She'll slide her hand across his back and shoulders as she moves around him in the kitchen. She'll swat at his arm when she's pretending to be annoyed. She'll walk up behind him and rest her chin on his shoulder to see what he's working on. Little touches that drive him nuts. Even worse, he finds himself picking up her habits. Bellamy's _never_ been a tactile person, but he's continuously catching himself with Clarke. A hand on the small of her back while they're walking, the way he catches her elbow when she's passing to get her attention, once, even brushing her hair out of her face and back behind her ear. He's being stupid and reckless. He can't have anything with Clarke, but sometimes she smiles so wide and he thinks about how he feels like he already does.

He starts worrying that her parents suspect something. He almost never sees Abby or Jake, but when he does, he finds it hard to meet their eyes. He asks Clarke about all those days she spent at his apartment and where they thought she was, but she just shrugs and says, “they didn't notice I was gone.” He knows he's freaking himself out, but he can't stop. He's going to get fired for having feelings for his employer's daughter. He's going to have to find a new job and maybe dip into his savings for Octavia's school in the meantime. Everything is going to go to Hell. It's illogical, but it's how he feels.

He's starting to think that not all of Clarke's touches are completely innocent. Her hands linger a little too long. Sometimes he catches her eye and she flushes, the pink in her cheeks obvious with her pale complexion. On more than one occasion, he's pretty sure he could have kissed her. _You work for her parents_ , he reminds himself constantly. Not a good idea.

Clarke's panic attacks are becoming less and less frequent. He only wakes up to her call about once a week, now. Even then, she calms down pretty quickly. With Christmas just around the corner, Clarke's in the highest spirits Bellamy's ever seen her. She keeps dragging him to movie night (which maybe he doesn't mind so much, particularly because Lexa is under the impression they're a couple, so Clarke tends to hold his hand and curl up in his lap and smile at him a lot). Clarke tells him she's mostly invested in movie night because she's eagerly watching every interaction between Miller and Monty, convinced they'll be official by New Years. Bellamy secretly agrees, but he likes to tease Clarke for her obsession.

The week of Christmas, Clarke and Octavia opt to skip dance lessons and instead disappear to God knows where. He finds out when he gets home from his last day of work before the four days he has off for holidays, to what appears to be an explosion of tinsel and red and green streamers. In the middle of it are Clarke and Octavia, laughing their asses off.

“What the hell is all this?”

“It's Christmas!” Octavia has tinsel in her hair. “We're _decorating_!”

“O told me you guys never have Christmas decorations.”

They can't _afford_ Christmas decorations is what it really is, and he almost tells her that because she really shouldn't buy things and let Octavia get used to certain standards when Clarke could be gone from their lives anytime, but her face is so lit up and both the girls just look _so happy_ that he bites back what he wants to say.

“So you decided to trash the apartment?” he teases.

“We had an accident,” Clarke waves dismissively at him. “It'll look badass when we're done.” He's not sure _badass_ is exactly how he would describe it, but it does look good. Clarke spins around, humming, putting the last touches on things and he wants to just reach out and gather her up in his arms, but he stays put. He's becoming slowly aware that this will probably be the last time he'll see her until after Christmas and he really shouldn't feel so sad about that.

Clarke leaves after dark, full of smiles and Merry Christmases and she kisses his cheek before she goes, backing away and looking up at him shyly through her lashes, her cheeks pink. He almost goes after her, to hold her, to ask her to stay. He doesn't, a huge show of his willpower and when he steps back into the apartment he sees the streamers and the tinsel and he just wishes he could kiss Clarke.

Christmas for him and Octavia is a rather quiet affair. He makes pancakes and and they spend all day in their pajamas, playing old boardgames and drinking hot chocolate. They exchange gifts, but only small things. Octavia gives him a book he's been eying for weeks now. He gets her a real phone, not a fancy one, and their plan is still one that has a limited number of texts, but she screams and bounces around and hugs him about a thousand times and it's totally worth it.

They watch _It's a Wonderful Life_ before bed, each curled up on an end of the sofa. As the credit are rolling Octavia looks over at him, biting her lip.

“I wish Clarke was here.”

“Me too.” He does, not even really because it's Christmas, but because the space between him and Octavia on the couch feels empty, the space Clarke has been occupying for weeks now, and even though he swore he'd never let it happen, there's someone besides the two of them that belongs here.

She calls him late, long after Octavia has fallen asleep and long after he should have too. He's lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling, when her call comes in. He picks up, expecting her sharp breaths and gasping words, but he gets something else, instead.

“Merry Christmas, Bell.”

“Merry Christmas, Princess.” He's thrown by the lack of crying. He and Clarke often talk after he's calmed her down, sometimes for hours, but she's never called him just to do so.

“Did you and Octavia have a good day?”

“Pancakes, pajamas, _It's a Wonderful Life_. It was nice.” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “We missed you.”

Clarke sighs. “I wish I was there and not here. Christmas is always the same. A huge meal, fancy clothes, expensive gifts that don't mean anything. And then, inevitably, one or both of my parents get called in to work and I sit around for the rest of the evening.”

“You should have come over. You shouldn't be alone on Christmas.”

“I figured you guys would want it to just be family for Christmas.”

 _You are_ , he almost says, but clamps his mouth shut. That's a big statement to make, one that comes with a lot of implications that may be true, but if they are, ones that he's pretty sure neither one of them is ready to face.

“We wouldn't have minded. Promise,” is what he says instead. Clarke is quiet for a moment.

“You're coming to Monty's New Year's party, right?”

“I'll stop by.” He doesn't want to leave Octavia totally alone on New Year's, but he's guessing Monty's party will have copious amounts of alcohol and possibly large groups of drunk older boys for Octavia to end up in trouble with, so he's not risking putting her in that situation. Clarke yawns loudly, reminding him how late it is.

“Go to bed!” he tells her. “It's past 2 AM. It's not even Christmas anymore.”

“Mmmmkay,” Clarke's voice is very sleepy. “Goodnight, Bell.”

“Night, Princess.” He lies awake for at least an hour, thinking about Clarke across town, who spent most of Christmas alone.

He goes back to work on December 27 th  , because a house needs a lot of maintenance and apparently Abby's planning this big dinner party and wants the dining room repainted before then. He doesn't see Clarke as much as he'd expected because her mom has suddenly gone into politician mode and is trotting Clarke out at all these various events and parties and when he does see her, it's as she's passing through in her designer dresses and fancy hairstyles. She almost doesn't look like _his_ Clarke.

He gets home from work early two days before New Year's and catches Octavia kissing Atom on the couch in the living room. For a second, he just stands there, completely caught off guard. After an entire day of painting, his shoulders ache and he pretty much just wants to take a shower and sleep until he has to go back and paint some more, but clearly that's not in cards. Octavia scrambles to make an excuse.

“Bell, it's not- We weren't-”  
“ _Out_ ,” he orders, and Atom flinches at the deadly tone, practically falling over himself to comply. Octavia protests, but Atom ignores her and is gone in under fifteen seconds flat. The glare Octavia turns on Bellamy would have flattened lesser people, but he's so angry it doesn't even register.

“What the _fuck_ , Octavia!”

“Right back at you, asshole!”

“Don't even go there,” Bellamy growls. “You're allowed to have _Clarke_ over unsupervised. Anyone else and you _ask first_. Don't act like that's a new rule.”

Octavia crosses her arms. “You never would have said yes.”

“That's right. You're fourteen, you don't get to have boys over unsupervised.” Bellamy's not quite yelling, which he thinks is pretty incredible of him, but it's a close thing.

“You're such a hypocrite! You think I don't know about what _you_ were doing at my age? You think I don't know about Mel or Echo or Roma or any of them?”

Bellamy hears his own voice go cold. “When _I_ was fourteen I was raising a three year old and taking care of Mom and getting the shit beat out of me by Willie and putting food in your goddamn mouth. I didn't _get_ to be fourteen. This isn't the same thing.”

“Just because _you_ went through crap and got all overprotective doesn't mean I shouldn't have a life!” Octavia snaps. “If I thought for _one second_ you would have let me go out on a date with Atom, I would have asked, but I know by now not to bother.” She storms off to her room, slamming her door. Bellamy's shoulders sink as he breathes out. That's just the icing on the cake there. It really has been a magnificently crappy day.

He shouldn't be surprised when his phone starts ringing in the middle of the night, but it's been since before Christmas that Clarke had a panic attack and he's so unused to it and half asleep and still pissed off at Octavia, that he even forgets it might be her calling.

“ _What_?” he practically spits into the phone. He vaguely registers that it's actually only 9 PM and he must have fallen asleep reading.

“Bell?” Clarke's voice is very small and it's different from the other times she's called. There's none of the telltale heavy breathing. She does sound like she might be crying, though.

“Clarke? What's wrong?” It's easy to forget that he's tired and annoyed and upset when she's on the other end of the phone with something clearly wrong.

“We were at this benefit,” she says softly. “And Mom and Dad got in this huge argument in front of everybody, screaming and Mom even threw a champagne flute at Dad. Somewhere in the course of it all it became about me and what a monumental screw up Mom thinks I am,” she sniffs and Bellamy momentarily has visions of strangling Abby.

“I don't know what's going on. Dad's going to get the car to take me home, but I... Can you come get me from home? I don't want to be there. I just want to be somewhere else.”

He almost jumps to say yes, but then stops himself. “What will they think of you disappearing with the help?” Now isn't the time to let his bitterness show, but he really is worried what will happen to his job if he comes and takes Clarke away.

“I'll meet you at the end of the street? I just don't want to take my own car because they'll notice I'm gone. I don't want them to realize I've left at all.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay. I'll be there.”

Clarke lets out a deep breath. “Thank you.”

He spends most of the drive plagued by thoughts of how this is probably a bad idea. They'll realize she's gone and they'll think something happened to her and police will be called and it'll turn into a giant fucking mess. Or he'll get there and be spotted by a neighbor and ratted out.

But as things turn out, he never gets there. He turns the corner about two miles from Clarke's house and slams on the brakes. There's a car that's mostly in a ditch, the front part crumpled by the tree it had hit. Bellamy pulls over, flips on his flashers, throws his car in park, before leaping out.

The passenger side is closer to him, so that's where he ends up, phone pressed to his ear, calling 911. He reaches the door and freezes. He can't move, can't think, can't breathe. It's like his mind has just shorted out. On the other end of the line, he can hear the operator asking for his emergency, but he can't get his voice to work. Time seems to be moving in slow motion as he stares through the glass at Clarke slumped over in the passenger seat. Her eyes flicker open and times starts moving again.

“Sir, what's your emergency? Can you tell me where you are?” the operator's voice is too loud. He rattles off the street and nearest address he can think of, adding something like, _hurry_ or _please_ as he hangs up. He grabs Clarke's door handle, but it's stuck. He throws his weight behind it and it gives, sending him stumbling back. As soon as he's caught his footing, he's moving forward again, leaning into the car to cup Clarke's face. Her eyelids are fluttering. He's very vaguely aware that Jake Griffin is coughing blood in driver's seat.

“Clarke.” His thumb brushes over her cheek. She groans, but he can see her trying to wake up. “Come on, Princess. You're okay. You're gonna be fine. I've got you.”

“Bellamy?” Her voice comes out confused and disjointed, but it sends relief rushing through him, making breathing just the slightest bit easier.

“Hey, I'm here. The ambulances will be here soon.” Clarke manages to turn her head a little to look at him.

“Bell?” She's looking at him like she's confused by his presence. “M-my dad?” For the first time, Bellamy turns his attention to Jake. It doesn't look good. He has blood running down his chin, coming out of his mouth and nose and there's a quickly darkening spot on the abdomen of his shirt.

“He's hurt,” he tells Clarke. She might never remember this, but he can't lie to her. She'll never forgive him if he lies to her.

“W-where?” Clarke tries to turn her head back her father's direction, but hisses and stops.

“He's bleeding. An abdominal wound, I think. I can't see how bad it is.” In the distance, he can hear sirens and he just wants them here.

“I'm sleepy,” she says softly, eyes drifting closed.

“Hey, no, no. Look at me, Princess. Stay with me, okay?”

“I'm so tired, Bell.”

“I know. It's not for long. Just a couple of minutes. You can do it. Listen, okay, I'll tell you more about Augustus. We never got to finish that one, remember?” He almost doesn't realize it when the paramedics arrive. He's too focused on making sure that Clarke's eyes stay open. They take Jake first, muttering things that sound ominous, but don't fully pierce his thoughts because he's too busy not taking his eyes off Clarke. Someone sort of pushes him to the side to get a good look at Clarke. He wants to shove them back, to be closer to her, but the logical part of his brain stops him. They're here to help, to do their job. They finally get her onto a backboard and then the gurney, Bellamy hovering. He's following them to the ambulance when someone steps into his path.

“Sir, you're going to need to wait here to give your statement.”

“I can't, I have to go with her.” He tries to step around the man, but he puts a hand on his arm.

“Sir, I'm afraid that you're a witness.”

“I'll give a statement at the hospital!” Bellamy snaps. They're now loading Clarke onto the ambulance. “I have to _go_.” He's been in an ambulance before and he knows one person is allowed to ride. Clarke catches his eyes and he can see her lips form his name. He's pretty sure there are tears on his cheeks, but he doesn't have time to worry about that.

The man's face softens a little. “Are you family?”

“She's my- I'm-” He closes his eyes for a moment. “I love her. _Please._ ” He's about to punch his way to her if he has to, but the man steps aside and he rushes to catch up, making it to the ambulance just in time.

“Bell?” Clarke asks waveringly, while the paramedics buzz around her, hooking her up to various machines as the ambulance takes off.

“I'm here.”

“Don't leave me, okay?” she says faintly.

“I won't. I promise.” He wants to say, _don't you dare leave me, either_ , but he doesn't. He follows her as far as they'll let him go, which leaves him pacing agitatedly outside the doors of the ICU. It's impossible for him to stay still, adrenaline rushing around in his veins. He asks after her over and over, but they never have anything to tell him. He's been told they can't release information to him, anyway, about a thousand times.

The police show up to take his statement. He makes it distractedly. There's really not a lot to tell. He hadn't seen the accident, but the police seem suspicious. He gets the distinct impression that they're fishing for some information that he doesn't have, but he's too worried about Clarke to focus on what that might be.

He doesn't know how long he's been waiting when Abby Griffin comes sailing into the room and spots him. She looks surprised to see him there for a split second before she approaches, looking ridiculously pulled together for the situation.

“Bellamy. They told me you were the one who called 911.” Abby nods at him.

“Is there any news?” He asks, ignoring her acknowledgement.

Abby considers him a moment before answering. “Clarke is still in critical condition, but she seems to be improving. She'll likely be in ICU for a couple of days. Jake...” Abby straightens a little. “Jake didn't make it.”

Bellamy swallows. “What _happened_?”

“The police believe their car was run off the road,” Abby tells him. “They are still looking for the other driver.” How on Earth can Abby Griffin deliver that news completely composed? The only sign of distress is the crease between her eyebrows. He tries to come up with some sort of reply, but she keeps talking.

“I should thank you for finding them. The paramedics say that if you had gotten there later, or if you hadn't kept Clarke awake, things would have been much worse for her. So, thank you. You should probably go home and get some sleep.”

Bellamy shakes his head. “I'm staying here. I want to know about Clarke. I'll wait.”

Abby's brow furrows further. “She won't be allowed unrelated visitors until she's out of ICU. That will likely be a couple of days.”

“I'll wait.”

Abby is looking at him like he's nuts. “Bellamy, I understand that in highly traumatizing situations, a certain need to follow through can form. I can see why you'd be attached to Clarke's recovery, but that's a long time to wait.”

“I'll wait,” he repeats. He almost adds that Abby herself could probably do with acting a lot more traumatized, but he stops himself. She seems to realize that his answer isn't going to change, so she shrugs and continues on her way.

Bellamy finally sinks into one of the chairs in the waiting room. He pulls out his cell phone to check the time. It's 4:39 AM. He considers his options for a moment, then dials Miller's number. The phone rings and rings, but finally, Miller answers, sounding completely out of it.

“Bellamy?”

“Hey, I'm really sorry I have to ask you to do this. But you still have that spare key to my place, right? It would be really helpful if you could go over to my place so someone's there when Octavia wakes up. I'm- I'm at the hospital. There's been an accident. Clarke-” He almost chokes on the words. “Clarke's in ICU. Her dad didn't make it.”

There's a moment of silence and then, “Shit.”

“Did he say _Clarke_ is in the hospital?” another voice asks. He realizes, suddenly, that the second voice is Monty. He has a fleeting moment of happiness for his friends, before he remembers why he's had to call Miller in the first place.

“Yeah, okay, man,” Miller says. “I'll head over to your place now. Um... Monty is gonna come to the hospital.”

“Tell him she probably won't be allowed visitors for a couple of days. I'm just... I can't leave.”

He hears a couple of muffled voices before Miller is back. “He's gonna come anyway.”

“Okay. Tell O I'll call her if there's news.”

“Will do. And, uh, Bellamy, are _you_ okay?”

“I'm- I'll be fine.”

“Okay. Don't worry about Octavia. I've got her.”

“Thanks, man.”

Monty arrives twenty minute laters, disheveled and blinking sleepily. He takes the seat next to Bellamy silently. It's more a tired silence than anything. Monty's got his head tipped back to rest on the wall behind him and Bellamy's leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.

He doesn't know how long they sit there, just waiting for time to pass. Twice, he sees Abby, but she doesn't talk to him again, even though he's sure she sees him there. He knows Abby, it doesn't matter that she used to be a surgeon and she knows exactly who to talk to in order to bend the rules, he won't see Clarke until they release her into a regular room. Not that Abby would even _think_ to bend rules for him, just the guy who works at her house and happened to find her daughter.

Around lunchtime, Monroe shows up with sandwiches and coffee and pasta salad. Bellamy shakes Monty awake and the three of them sit and eat somberly. After lunch, Monty goes home to take a nap and a shower, but Monroe stays. She's more talkative than Monty, though not much. She just tells him trivial things, stuff he's not even supposed to respond to. Jasper and Maya have their first date next week. Monroe met a cool girl in one of her classes named Costia and has invited her to the next movie night. Monty had told her before he left that he's rescheduling his New Year's party to be a “back to school” bonfire in light of, well, everything. It's all little things and he barely manages to acknowledge it, but he appreciates her effort.

In the evening, Miller and Octavia replace Monroe, who leaves with a little wave and her empty tupperware. Octavia's eyes are red from crying and hugs Bellamy fiercely. He hugs her back, a tiredness seeping into his bones. He's running on caffeine and anxiety, now that the adrenaline is long gone.

“She's gonna be okay, right?” Octavia whispers. Bellamy exchanges a glance with Miller, who's quietly taken the seat Monty had occupied that morning.

“I hope so,” Bellamy says, finally.

Octavia nods once. “She's strong. She'll be okay.”

And it goes like that for the next 48 hours, shifts of Clarke's friends appearing to keep him company, bring him food. The next time Monty shows up, he insists Bellamy stretch out across several seats and try to get some sleep. He does so reluctantly, but his eyelids are so heavy that he's out before he knows it.

All in all, he spends eighty one hours in the hospital before Clarke is moved to a room he's allowed to visit. He only finds out because one of the nurses who's watched him spend the past three and half days in the waiting room takes pity on him and informs him, even though she's not supposed to.

He hovers around the the hallway until he's sure Abby isn't in there, and then slides into Clarke's room. It's weird, how it's possible to feel incredibly relieved and breathless at the same time. Clarke's asleep, and there are various cuts on her face he hadn't even noticed the night of the accident. She looks so small in the hospital bed.

He sinks onto the chair next to her bed, reaching out to take her hand. He's never noticed how tiny Clarke's hands are before. He isn't sure how long she sleeps, before her brow scrunches up a little and she shifts, her eyes slowly opening. She blinks a few times and her eyes are kind of hazy, a look he knows well, glazed over from drugs.

“Bell?”

“Hey, Princess.” He shifts forward so she can see him better. Her fingers tighten over his. She's pretty out of it, but she's alive and she's awake and he's there and that's all he cares about.

“You're all stubbly.” She crinkles up her nose and he realizes she's trying to pick up her other hand to touch his cheek. She presses her lips together in concentration. He takes her hand and helps her lift it to brush across his jaw.

Clarke giggles. “Weird.” Her hands falls back to her side. “I'm glad you're here.”

“Of course I'm here.”

“You look tired. Haven't you been sleeping? My mom doesn't look tired.”

Bellamy brushes her words away. “Where is your mom?”

Clarke frowns. “I can't remember. Work? I think?” She sort of makes a movement with her shoulders that he thinks is supposed to be a shrug. “You look tired. You should be sleeping,” she observes again.

“Your mom should be here, not at work.” Nevermind that he's really glad she isn't because then _he_ couldn't be here, at least, not without giving away that Clarke means a hell of a lot more to him than she should.

“I'd rather have you here, anyway.” He can see her eyelids getting heavy and he has a feeling she won't remember any of this. She also clearly either doesn't know or can't remember what happened to her father. He wouldn't put it past Abby to keep that from her. He would tell her, if he thought it would do any good, but at this state, it probably wouldn't.

He absolutely does not mean to fall asleep, but he wakes up to a tap on his shoulder and he's got his cheek pressed to the bed next to where his fingers are intertwined with Clarke's. His muscles are screaming at him. He blinks up to see Monty standing over him.

“Hey,” Monty says quietly. “This is an intervention. You're going home to take a shower and get some real sleep. I'm gonna sit with her. Also, Abby likes me, so it won't be weird if she walks in on that. It's almost dinner time, so I'm betting she'll be here soon.”

“I shouldn't leave her,” Bellamy protests, even though he's having a hard time keeping his eyes open.

“Bellamy, you've been here for days. You have to go home. Not for long, just enough to get some strength back. Miller's driving you.” Bellamy hadn't even noticed his friend standing in the corner. He knows they're right. He's so tired he's practically delirious.

He struggles to his feet and presses a kiss to Clarke's forehead before trailing Miller out of the hospital. He falls asleep again on the way back to his apartment and wakes up when Miller shakes him. He notices his own truck is in the driveway.

“How'd my truck get here?”

“You don't remember us asking about it? You left it running on the side of the road. Jasper and Monroe picked it up the night of the- that first night and we moved it a couple of days ago and now _I_ have the keys and you're not getting them back until you've gotten enough sleep to drive properly.” Bellamy's too exhausted to even argue. He stumbles into the apartment, assures Octavia that Clarke is going to be okay, and falls into bed.

After a solid twelve hour block of sleep, a shower, and a shave, he's finally deemed fit to have his car keys back. It turns out that once Clarke was in the clear from ICU, they weren't too concerned about keeping her in the hospital, so Abby is able to take her home that afternoon. Because of this, Bellamy just goes to work, like he's supposed to have been doing for the past three days. He's pretty sure Abby didn't notice he hasn't been doing his job.

Abby only takes enough time off to transport Clarke home and get her settled in bed before she heads back to work, so as soon as Bellamy's sure she's gone, he slips into Clarke's room. She looks both better and worse. Her cheeks have more color and her eyes are clear, but there's sadness clinging to her that hadn't been there before.

“Hey,” she says quietly.

“Hey, Princess.”

There are teardrops clinging to the tips of her lashes. She reaches out wordlessly and he crosses the room and climbs very carefully onto the bed next to her. Clarke, who seems less concerned about her wounds, rolls into his arms and clings to him.

“He's gone,” she mumbles against his chest. “My dad's just _gone_.” She starts crying then, big heaving sobs that rack her body so violently that he worries she'll hurt herself. He doesn't know what to say to that, so he just holds her until she stops crying.

Clarke hardly leaves her room for two weeks. Bellamy spends more of his working day with her than he should, but he figures as long as he keeps up the house and grounds well enough, it shouldn't matter. She doesn't cry again, after that first day and he isn't sure if that's Clarke compartmentalizing, or if he should be worried. It's almost impossible to get her to smile. It doesn't stop him from trying.

The day of her dad's funeral dawns with a gentle pink sky. He hadn't slept that night before, just laid in his bed with Clarke on the other end of the phone. He makes coffee and wakes up Octavia, who stumbles around with her eyes half closed, struggling to wake up. They don't own anything that's really funeral appropriate, or at least, not the sort of funeral Abby has planned, but they go anyway, and sit in the back, where Abby's eyes slide over them like they aren't there.

Clarke sits in the front pew in a clean cut black dress and a sleek hairstyle, her chin up and her face blank. There are still bruises and cuts on her skin, and they stand out, vividly, an ugly reminder of why they're all here. Abby speaks eloquently, if with a lack a of emotion, but Bellamy wouldn't have expected anything else. She'll spin this tragedy into campaign funds without thinking twice about it. He wonders if she can _possibly_ be as cold and collected as she appears.

During the reception, he and Octavia head out back and sit on a bench among gravestones. Octavia makes clover chains like Clarke taught her and talks in subdued tones about her new friend Harper, who has a puppy. Bellamy half listens, but mostly keeps his eyes on the door of the church, waiting for that familiar blonde hair to tumble out.

It only takes twenty minutes before Clarke's escaping from the church. She practically runs out, but stops when she sees him and Octavia. Bellamy stands up, just in time for Clarke to crash into him, throwing her arms around his neck. He's so stunned, and a little winded, that is takes him a few moments to respond, before wrapping her up in his hold.

“I don't wanna go home tonight,” she whispers. “Can I stay with you?”

He's pretty sure her mom will notice, but all he says is, “Of course you can.”

Clarke and Octavia sit close together in his truck and hold hands while he drives, Octavia whispering something in to Clarke's ears that makes the tiniest ghost of a smile appear on her lips. He doesn't get to see more, because he pulls out of the parking lot and turns his attention to the road.

Clarke's stayed at the apartment before. She was there almost a week straight when he was injured, but she's always stayed with Octavia. Tonight, she's curled up in his shirt and sweatpants in his bed and he can't stand how much his heart swells. He tries not to even think the words that he'd yelled at the paramedic to get on the ambulance. It's a dangerous thing to think.

He's not at all surprised when he wakes up to Clarke crying out in her sleep. She wakes up with wild eyes and heaving lungs and wraps herself tightly in her arms while he talks her down. He had suspected the nightmares and the panic attacks would get worse with this latest tragedy, but he hates being right. She calms slowly, her fists unclenching and her body relaxing into his.

“It's my mom's fault he's dead,” Clarke whispers.

“Princess, you know she couldn't have known the argument would end like that.” She's only got one parent now. She can't afford to estrange Abby too.

“That's not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

Clarke is quiet. “Nothing, I just want to sleep.” He knows it's not nothing, but he lets it slide. He doesn't know what else to do. There's something about Clarke that feels as remote as the first day he met her.

He's right. Abby does notice that Clarke doesn't come home. He hears them arguing about it the next day while he's changing the lightbulbs in the sconces in the entryway. He's not sure how it escalates the way it does, but by the time he climbs down the ladder and ventures to hover in the kitchen doorway, deciding it's probably best not to try to walk through with the ladder, Abby is yelling about responsibility.

“You want to talk about responsibility? You're the reason Dad's dead!” Clarke screams. The hollow snapping sound that echoes through the air when Abby's hand connects with Clarke's face is one he's heard more times than he can count. And it's because of this that he's already moving forward before the action even registers. Clarke, who'd been standing frozen like she can't even believe it, sees him coming and steps to intercept him. He tries to blow past her, to put himself between her and her mother, but Clarke plants her feet and puts her palms flat on his chest and holds him there.

“It's okay, Bell.”

He tries to step around her, but she moves, blocking his path and looking at him with pleading eyes. He swallows, taking a deep breath and trying to calm himself.

“I'm alright,” Clarke says soothingly and his eyes find the red imprint across her cheek and his hand follows, brushing over the spot and feeling pain twinge in his chest at the mark. No one should ever raise a hand to Clarke, not ever. Over Clarke's shoulder, he realizes that Abby's watching them, a surprised and dark expression on her face. He doesn't care. She can think whatever she wants.

“This isn't just going to go away, Clarke,” Abby speaks, even as she's checking her watch. She's just going to walk away, after hitting her daughter, she's just going to gather up her stuff and go. It makes Bellamy angry all over again, but one of Clarke's hands slides up to his shoulder and squeezes to get his attention and she shakes her head very slightly. Abby doesn't look at or speak to Clarke again before she goes.

Bellamy is simmering, his anger on a low heat. “Are you okay?” he grits out, once Abby's car is out of sight.

“She killed my dad.”

“Clarke, you _know_ she couldn't have known. I'm more concerned about that fact that she just _hit_ you.”

“No,” Clarke shakes her head. “I don't mean it like that. Bellamy, I think she had my dad murdered.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, like the monster chapter itself, here's some monster notes to go with it.  
> \- hopefully you're getting this with the story, but here's how the Bellamy/Clarke dynamic is in my head. Bellamy began to have feelings for Clarke before she has feelings for him (sometime in Chapter 2), but doesn't begin to acknowledge them until part way through chapter 3. He comes to terms with the fact that he has feeling for her pretty easily, but can't get over their social differences and can't actually believe that Clarke would have a relationship with him. Clarke is the opposite, essentially. She has a much harder time coming to terms with the fact that she has feelings for Bellamy at all (trust issues and her emotional walls and such), but once she does, she doesn't see anything in particular standing in their way, so she begins to drop hints (Clarke getting all touchy), but since he doesn't seem to respond to them, she's not sure he returns her feelings and she is afraid to risk their friendship (let's be honest, domestic partnership) because she really needs his support. So there are our two favorite idiots being idiots.  
> \- Lexa's role is minimal, so I hope none of you are holding out for Clexa drama. She's not a threat to Bellarke, they have other problems. However, I did bring her in because I feel it's important to acknowledge Clarke's sexuality, though her being bi doesn't play a large role in this fic. I chose not to make Lexa an ex because it felt like too much baggage for Clarke (she certainly has enough as it is), so yeah.  
> \- On a similar note, Raven is mentioned in this chapter and I gave Clarke the role of being Raven's revenge sex, rather than Bellamy because obviously his character was not available for that and also I can totally see Raven being experimental. Again, not a threat to Bellarke, just a shout out to a character I adore. I had initially intended to bring Raven into this fic in a more active role, but it ended up being overwhelming and I realized the place I had held for her could be filled by various other characters and I don't want to write Raven a part that doesn't do her justice. So let's just say she's off being fabulous and ruling the world and kicking ass and taking names.  
> -Also Abby. I don't hate Abby, but for the story I wanted to tell, she just works as horrible, so she is in this.  
> -Finally, about chapters, length, and updating: The next chapter is completely written and the whole work through Chapter 4 is hitting right at around 40k. So the next few days I'll be revising chapter 4 and working on Chapter 5 which will be the final chapter. This whole thing is kind of a monster to write, but I'm really enjoying it and hope you guys like the latest update!


	4. In My Bones

“ _It's in my bones, in the water,_

_in my skin, in every corner._

_And like a shade, I'm gonna color you in.”_

She doesn't remember a lot about that night. The doctors have told her it's perfectly normal to have some memory loss associated with head trauma, so for days it had just been flashes. She remembers the argument Abby and Jake had, though not in detail. They'd been yelling a lot of business stuff she didn't understand and then her name had been dragged into it, but everything after that is just a mess of images. First she remembers the way the car had jerked to the side, then it's Bellamy's voice telling her she has to stay awake and a hazy image of his eyes. Later it's bright lights and sterile voices and the smell of antiseptic. There are other smaller things, flashes from the party, men and women in fancy clothes, drinking fancy drinks, but for some reason, there's one man, bald with icy blue eyes, that stands out to her. She's seen him before, she's sure, once when she'd dropped by her mother's office to bring her a dress, he'd been there. She'd seen him through the glass of the meeting room sitting with Jaha.

She doesn't know why her brain catches on his face until the night of the funeral, when the nightmare she wakes from features the man's icy eyes, the exact ones she'd seen behind the steering wheel of the car that had forced theirs from the road. She doesn't tell, at first. She could be wrong. A dream isn't necessarily the same thing as a memory. What if she's wrong? But the more she thinks about it, the more sure she is. The man who'd forced their car off the road, he works with her mother. She tries to tell herself it could just be a coincidence. So he'd left the party too and was going to same way. That's not a big deal, right? Except, his actions in the car, the complete calm she'd seen in his eyes, it hadn't felt like an accident.

When she yells the accusation at her mother, in vague enough terms that she can always pretend she meant it the way Bellamy thinks she did, Abby hits her. And that's what confirms it in her mind. Her mother has never been violent. No matter what Clarke has yelled at her, she's never lashed out physically. And the look on her mother's face is like nothing Clarke has ever seen before, surprised, angry, scared. She's afraid Clarke knows something.

“I know I sound crazy,” she tells Bellamy when they're alone in his bedroom that night. “I _know_ . But I saw that man's face. He works for my mother and he meant to run us off the road. Not to mention, Mom didn't know I left with Dad and then she called me like fifteen times while we were on the way out and I just ignored the calls. I don't know what she was going to say to me, but I think she was trying to keep me from getting into the car with him because she _knew_ what was going to happen to him.”

“I get that they were arguing, Princess, but why would your mom _kill_ him? That's going a bit far, don't you think?” Bellamy's wrapping and unwrapping a lock of her hair around his index finger as they talk and Clarke closes her eyes, nestled into his side.

“I don't _know_.” She bites her lips. “I don't even understand what they were arguing about. My dad kept saying something about how people deserve to know something? And Mom told him to keep his mouth shut. It had to have been about her work.”

“She a politician,” Bellamy says slowly. “Do you think she could be into something illegal?”

Clarke never would have thought so. But she also would have said her mother never could have had Jake killed, and she believes that's what happened down to her bones. She's starting to think there's nothing she wouldn't put past her mother.

“Funds,” Clarke says softly. “It's always about money with her.”

“Okay, so what now?”

“I have to know. I have to know why my dad is dead.”

Bellamy pulls her closer. “Where do you even start with something like this?”

“I think I know just the person.” Bellamy doesn't push for answers. He seems to have accepted that she'll share with him when she's ready. She thinks about all the things she'll have to do if she wants to get to the bottom of this, about how she could end up just like her father, and somewhere in the midst of scheming, she falls asleep.

She wakes up with another nightmare turned panic attack that night and before she can utter a word, Bellamy's already gathering her against him, one hand rubbing her back soothingly as she gasps and shudders against his body. He's speaking in low tones, gentle words, and it sinks in, getting under her skin the way he's always been able to. As her breathing starts to become normal and the actual words he's saying start to register, she absorbs every one.

“That's it. You're okay. That's my princess.” His words strike her in the chest, where a perpetual ache has set up shop, always there, reaching for him. She _is_ his, even if he doesn't realize the words he's said. Bellamy Blake is the only person in the world she trusts with absolute certainty. Somewhere along the way, she fell in love with him.

She takes Octavia out the next day, not having spent much quality time with her recently. They haven't had dance since before Christmas, so Clarke hasn't spent time with Octavia alone. Even though she has a million things to do and she wants to get started on figuring out what exactly her father knew or did to get himself killed, she decides Octavia is alive, and takes precedent.

They go shopping, Octavia seeming to make it her goal to try on every dress in the store. She forces Clarke into a few as well, which she only protests to lightly because she wants Octavia to have fun. The fourth dress she tries on, deep green and long, is actually comfortable and she steps out to see Octavia to find the girl spinning in circles in front of the mirror in a dress that appears to be made entirely of sequins.

“I want it,” Octavia announces. “You know, for Monty and Jasper's back to school bonfire. I mean, I know _high school_ has already started back since it sucks, but Bell still said I could go if he does.”

Clarke smiles more fully than she has in days. “ _Is_ he going?”

“He will if you ask him to.” Octavia gives her puppy dog eyes.

“Is this because Atom's gonna be there?” Clarke gives her a stern look. “Don't think that just because I was in the hospital, I didn't hear about that. I am _not_ getting in the middle of a Blake family feud.”

“No!” Octavia insists. “It's because I want to wear a pretty dress and get to actually hang out with people who don't have the minds of four year olds.”

Clarke scrunches up her nose in distaste. “I didn't particularly like high school, either.”

“Soooo, party?” Octavia questions, huge hopeful eyes and a tentative smile on her face. It feels so good to be around Octavia. It's so easy for Clarke to get caught up in the darkness around her, but Octavia's so bright that you can't help but bask in her light. She reminds Clarke that life isn't always bad, that there are good times, even in the midst of recovering from tragedy.

“Okay, fine.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Octavia bounds over to her and scoops her into a hug. Clarke realizes Octavia is as tall as she is now, and still growing. It's weird to thinks she's known this girl long enough to actually see her grow.

“You're my favorite, ever, Clarke!” Octavia sings.

“Of course I am,” Clarke rolls her eyes, but can't keep the smile off her face. She also buys Octavia the sparkly dress.

They get ice cream on the way back to the apartment and sit in her car in the parking lot of the apartment complex, eating it as the sun sinks.

“Real talk,” Octavia says, even as she pouts at the sprinkle that's fallen from her cone.

“Yes?”

“When are you going to officially get together with my brother?”

Clarke hates how fucking obvious a blush is with her fair skin. There's no point trying to hide it, so instead she just doesn't meet Octavia's eyes and stares out the windshield at the sunset. She shrugs.

“I'm not kidding, Clarke.” Octavia's voice has taken on a slightly more serious tone. “I don't get what the hold up is. You do love him, don't you?”

It's Octavia's bluntness that does it, really, the fact that she asks her outright. “Yes,” Clarke whispers.

“Then what's the problem?”

“I need him.” It's a hard thing to explain. “It's not that I wouldn't... Look, if he said something, or did something, I'd be down, but I _need_ him, and I'm not going to risk anything by doing or saying something.”

Octavia scoffs, finishing off the last of her ice cream cone. “But he's crazy about you! He didn't move from the hospital for over _three_ days. The only other person in the world he'd do that for is me.”

“I get it, O. I just... I can't.”

Octavia crosses her arms with a huff. “I'm _going_ to meddle.”

Clarke laughs. “I would expect nothing less. Now let's go upstairs and pretend that we didn't ruin our dinner and try to avoid a stern talking to.”

Bellamy looks at her suspiciously when she tells him she wants to go to Monty and Jasper's bonfire. She knows he's worried about her, and with good reason. After all, he's the one who's being woken up by her panic attacks at night. But she feels better now that she has a goal, something to work towards, rather than just nothing to do and the loss of her father to wallow in. Still, she knows it's odd for her to suggest a party.

“Did Octavia put you up to this?”

“No comment.”

“Clarke, you really don't have to go just because she asked.”

“I _want_ to go. Really. I think it'll be good, to get out and see people.”

Bellamy still looks vaguely skeptical, but he nods. “Okay, fine, Octavia and I will go.” Clarke grins triumphantly. Bellamy's expression softens into something tender and gentle and more than a little bit terrifying to Clarke. She curses the heat she can feel slipping up into her cheeks. To distract him, she changes the subject.

“Besides, I want to talk to Jasper anyway.”

“Why Jasper?”

“Because Jasper works in my mom's office.” Clarke frowns. “Obviously I don't want to get him _involved,_ but I also don't want to ask him to look in to anything and end up leaving him clueless and vulnerable. I think I might have to tell him what's going on.”

“Are you sure about that?” Bellamy sits up a little straighter, concern radiating from him.

“I don't think I have a choice. I can't just leave this alone, Bell.”

He's frowning, but he nods. “I understand.”

Clarke yawns, rolling onto her back to watch Bellamy's ceiling fan turn in lazy circles.

“Go to sleep,” he tells her, closing his book and setting it on the nightstand.

“Are you?”

“In a minute. I have to finish the dishes.” He stands up, padding to the door, but glances back at her and catches her watching. “ _Sleep_ , Princess,” he tells her, and slips out, closing the door behind him. She listens to the sounds of him moving around the kitchen, turning the water on and off.

“Have you told her yet?” Octavia's voice pierces the silence, muffled and almost too quiet for Clarke to make out.

“Jesus Christ, O. You scared the crap out of me. I thought you were in bed. It's a school night.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“Did I tell who, what?” There's a hesitation in his voice that has Clarke thinking that this is a conversation he and Octavia have had before.

Octavia puts on a dramatic voice, “Did you tell Clarke that's she's a Goddess among women, the stars in your sky, the reason why birds chirp and the sun shines.” Clarke's glad there's no one around to see her blush.

“Stop being ridiculous.” Bellamy dodges the question.

“You called her _your_ princess the other day, did you know that?”

Bellamy is silent and there's the sound of water running in the kitchen again. Clarke knows she shouldn't be eavesdropping, that she might hear something she doesn't want to hear, or something that she does and she doesn't know how to handle.

“She is, you know,” Octavia continues in a serious voice.

“Is what?”

“Yours.”

There's another long pause. “She's not.”

“She _could_ be. She loves you.” Octavia sounds dangerously close to utter annoyance.

“You couldn't possibly know that.” Bellamy's voice is hard and distant and Clarke wishes, more than anything, that she could see his face to understand what's going through his head.

“Actually, I can. I asked her.”

There's the sound of shattering glass and Bellamy cursing profusely. The heat kicks in, a low hum with the sound of air through the vents and she can't hear what else is said. She doesn't feel sleepy anymore. But she also has _no idea_ what's going through Bellamy's head, so when he comes back she pretends to be asleep. When she does actually fall asleep, it's the first time since her dad died that she sleeps through the night.

Monty and Jasper's Back to School Bonfire seems to mostly be an excuse to light things on fire and consume large quantities of alcohol. Clarke doesn't partake because she's still on some medicine from the hospital and she's smart enough not to throw alcohol into the mix. Besides, she's keeping Octavia company in the sober department. Bellamy grabs a beer when they first get there, but seems to be staying away from the rest of the alcohol and when Clarke raises her eyebrows at him, he holds up his keys.

“Designated driver,” he explains.

“I can drive tonight if you want to drink,” Clarke offers. She knows Bellamy doesn't get a lot of chances to cut loose, having been responsible for Octavia most of his life.

He shakes his head. “I'm good.”

“Okay,” Clarke smiles at him and goes looking for Jasper, hoping to catch him before he's gotten too deep into the moonshine. She's surprised when she's successful. Jasper is sitting on a log by the fire, prodding it with a stick.

“I thought you'd be absolutely trashed by now,” Clarke admits, taking the seat next to him.

“I _would_ be, but I lost a bet and got stuck with fire starting duty, which means I'm not allowed to touch alcohol for...” he checks his cell phone, “fourteen more minutes. Once we're sure this thing is good on it's own, then I'm free.”

“Well, I'm glad I caught you, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay?” Jasper drops the stick and angles his body towards her. Clarke glances around to make sure there's no one else within hearing range.

“It's serious.”

“Clarke, what's going on?” For being a big goofball, Jasper can get serious fast.

“There's this guy, who works for my mom. I need to know more about him. The thing is, no one can know I'm looking in to this. I don't want to get you involved in something bad, Jasper. If you help me, you'll have to be quiet about it. People can't know you're doing this.”

“Clarke, what's this about?”

She takes a deep breath. “The accident Dad and I were in. I'm pretty sure it wasn't an accident.”

Jasper blinks at her for a few moments. “You don't think... No, Clarke, there's no way this has anything to do with Abby or the campaign.”

“Jasper I _saw_ the guy who ran us off the road. He meant to do it. And he works for my mother.”

“Did you ever think maybe he _betrayed_ your mother? Like he did this to mess with her campaign?”

Clarke doesn't think that's it, but she knows Jasper wants to believe Abby and the campaign is innocent because he works there and things will get messy if she hired someone to kill her husband. It doesn't matter what Jasper thinks.

“I don't know, okay? But I need to find out who this guy is. Do you think you can do that? He's bald, big, scary looking with light blue eyes.”

Jasper nods slowly. “I can access employee files. I'll pull the ones that fit your description.”

Clarke breathes out in relief. “Thank you.” She stands up. “But be careful, okay? And don't tell _anybody_.”

“I won't,” Jasper promises. She hopes he remembers that once he's got alcohol in his system. Monty has rigged up some speakers and is pumping out some music that a few people have started to dance to. It's still early and a lot of people are still arriving. She manages to find a tub with unopened bottles of water. She's not so worried about anyone drugging the drinks here, but she _is_ worried that the supposed water might not actually be that, if the bottles are open.

She notices Bellamy seems to have taken up a post on one of the logs near the fire and dancers and is keeping a close eye on Octavia, as she chats with different people arriving. Clarke smiles at the sparkly dress, which is reflecting the firelight and sending little bits of golden light bouncing all over the place.

“She's going to be fine,” Clarke tells him as she sits down on his right side. He grumbles something at the back of his throat and doesn't take his eyes off his sister. Clarke elbows him in the side.

“Try to trust her a little bit.”

“You're forgetting _I'm_ the one who walked in on her with Atom.”  
“ _Kissing_ Atom,” Clarke amends.

“Who knows where it was going,” Bellamy mutters under his breath.

“Okay, nope, that's it.” Clarke stands up and steps into his line of sight. “Up.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Come on.” She holds out her hand. He sighs, but takes it, and she rocks back on her heels to try to pull him up. He laughs as he stands and she stumbles a little bit.

“You don't weigh enough for that, Princess. You're tiny.”

“Petite,” Clarke corrects, tugging him along.

“Mind telling me where we're going?”

“I want to see the stars.” Clarke leads him far enough outside the ring of firelight that the world is a dusky blue and then she sinks into the grass, lying back to look up at the sky. Bellamy follows more slowly.

“Do you ever think about what stars are?” Clarke asks softly. It cliché, maybe, to have such a fascination with stars. After all, people have been writing poetry and songs and everything else about them for all of human history.

“They're burning balls of gas.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “You can't fool me, Bellamy Blake. I know you're more poetic than that.” She sees, out of the corner of her eye, him turn his head to look at her, but she keeps her eyes upward.

“My mom used to say that stars were little bits of Heaven that fell into our world,” he says very softly. “And that if they ever reached the ground, they became angels.”

“Does that mean Heaven is on fire?” Clarke wonders.

“Clarke?” Bellamy pushes up onto an elbow, so her view of the sky is suddenly replaced by his face, the sprinkling of freckles and his dark eyes. He's very close to her, so close that she can feel his breath and see the uncertainty in his eyes. She doesn't think about it when she puts her hands on the back of his neck, sliding her fingers into his curls and pulling him the rest of the way down.

He tastes like the chocolate croissants she'd made for the party, that he'd been sneakily eating in the car, and it makes her smile against his lips. He kisses slowly, in no hurry at all, like he's determined to memorize her. And just when she thinks that his touch and his lips and his tongue are going to set her on fire, he pulls back and lies back on the grass. Clarke turns her head to look at him and feels a laugh bubble up in her chest. He meets her eyes and smiles back.

“Why are you laughing?” he asks.

“Because you make me happy, even when there's all this crap going on and I shouldn't be. I'm just happy.”

They wander back to the bonfire in no rush, fingers twined together. Clarke knows she's still smiling like an idiot, but she doesn't care. She catches Octavia's eyes across the fire and Octavia lights up, a huge grin spreading across her face, positively beaming. Clarke knows she's going to get an, _I told you so_ , later, but she doesn't care.

Because they are some of the few sober people at the bonfire at this point, they decide to leave early. Clarke expects Octavia to complain but she's too distracted by the fact that Clarke and Bellamy are still holding hands, wiggling her eyebrows at Clarke.

“So, Bell, did _you_ have fun at the bonfire?” Octavia says loudly.

“Don't even go there, O,” Bellamy says in his no argument tone, but Clarke notices the tips of his ears are pink.

“Because, you know, I distinctly remember that you didn't really want to go tonight.”

“Seriously, O.”

“I bet Clarke is glad you went.” They pull into the driveway and Octavia hops out of the truck. “Can we just all acknowledge the fact that if either of you had listened to me, this would have happened a long time ago?”

“I acknowledge that if you keep talking I won't be responsible for my actions,” Bellamy suggests. Octavia laughs and skips towards the apartment complex.

“I take it she's been pestering you as much as she's been pestering me,” Clarke says softly and Bellamy kisses her in response. Clarke doesn't even care that it's a slightly awkward angle, turned in the seat with the console between them, because she still can't believe she's kissing Bellamy. He pulls back and opens his door.

“She might have had a point. But don't tell her I said that,” he grins, hopping out of the truck.

Clarke's been told time and time again that she makes things more complicated than they need to be and she knows she's doing it again, thinking too much. But even though things change, even though Bellamy is undeniably affectionate and takes every opportunity to kiss her breathless, Clarke can't stop wondering how fast a relationship with him is supposed to move. She never does anything the normal way it seems. She knows Bellamy is being careful with her, she _knows_ he's worried. On Tuesday, when she gets an email from Jasper with employee files from her mother's campaign, Bellamy's shoulders go tight and his mouth flattens into a thin line.

Unfortunately, the man she's looking for isn't in the files. She emails Jasper back and he responds with, _'digging deeper, let you know what I find.'_ She notices the dark look on Bellamy's face as he's passing and catches his arm.

“Bell.”

He stops and looks at her, but his jaw is clenched and she can practically feel him vibrating with frustration.

“Hey, it's gonna be fine.” She stands up and puts her hands on his shoulders.

“Stuff like this is _dangerous_ , Clarke. You're accusing your mom of _murder_ to cover up something in her business. Things might be different where I'm from, but people work the same way. You stick your nose in stuff like that and it gets you killed.”

“I can't just let this go!”

“I'm not asking you to, I just...” Bellamy tilts his head back the way she's realized he does when he's particularly upset and trying to keep his cool. “You can't ask me to like it.”

“How about this. If something happens, you can say I told you so.”

“That's not funny.”

“It's a little funny.” Clarke kisses the underside of his jaw, having to stand on her tiptoes to reach. He doesn't soften, so she just keeps trailing kisses down his neck until he makes a sound in the back of his throat and slips his hands around under her thighs to lift her up and kiss her properly.

They end up in his bed and he's still angry, she can tell by the pressure of his kiss, but she doesn't care because she's under his hands and she's burning. They haven't had sex yet, which, really, it's only been five days, so it's not like that's unusual or anything, but with Bellamy, Clarke's timeline is all messed up. That's what happens when you fall in love with someone and continue to pretend to just be friends for a while, she figures.

They're both topless when the front door slams, causing then to jerk apart. It registers a moment later that this means Octavia is home. Clarke snatches one of Bellamy's t-shirts from on top of his dresser and throws it on.

“I'm back!” Octavia yells loudly. She'd had dinner at her new friend Harper's house, and Clarke is guessing will be full of stories. She heads out into the living room, Bellamy following her. He's got a tired expression on his face and she knows their discussion from earlier may have been sidetracked, but is definitely not over.

Octavia takes one look at them and raises her eyebrows. “Sorry, did I interrupt? I'd have thought you two would have better self control by now. You've had like a week.” Clarke feels her cheeks heat up at Octavia's assumption. She doesn't turn to see what Bellamy's face looks like, but Octavia glances between the two of them and her mouth drops open.

“Oh my God. You two haven't- I just assumed-”  
“We are _not_ discussing this, O,” Bellamy cuts in. “The fact that you even want to, frankly, is disturbing to me.”

“I don't want _details_ , but it would have been nice to know that those earplugs I've been sleeping in the past week were unnecessary.”

“You bought _earplugs_ for this?” Bellamy's mouth is hanging open.

“We have thin walls!”

“Which is why I don't have girls over here!”

“Clarke's over here all the time! What is she, a yeti?”

Bellamy throws his hands up in the air. “I can't talk about this with you, O.”

Octavia rolls her eyes and turns to Clarke. “Okay, since Bell is being an idiot, it would be nice to be notified when earplugs might be a good idea, please.”

Clarke gives Octavia a helpless look, her cheeks still burning and Octavia huffs loudly. “Okay, fine. Earplugs all the time, it is.”

“You don't have to wear earplugs, O.” Bellamy scrubs a hand over his face. “Just... You don't worry about it, okay?”

“I just think-” Octavia starts, but Bellamy interrupts her.

“I'm going to take a nap. I have a headache.” He slams his bedroom door behind him.

Bellamy doesn't bring up the investigation into her father's death again in the next week, but his jaw tightens up any time he notices her on the computer or frowning at emails from Jasper. She can tell he's holding back a lot of things he wants to say about it.

“Jasper says he's finding some inconsistencies in the books, but nothing for anyone to kill over so far,” she tells him one night. Bellamy is reading a book, the one Octavia got him for Christmas, it's about Greek myths related to constellations. He closes it, a finger keeping his place.

“Why are you telling me this, Clarke?”

“I _want_ to be able to talk to you about it.”

Bellamy takes a slow breath. “You can. I get that it's something you have to do, but it's hard for me to watch, okay?”

“This isn't just about it being dangerous.” Clarke has been wanting to ask him what's going on for days. There's something she can see, just on the tip of his tongue that he's constantly suppressing. She's tired of him keeping things from her, even if it's things she doesn't want to hear.

“I worry.”

“I know you do. About what, specifically?”  
“You're too... I don't know, Clarke. You're so active and focused and you haven't cried at all, and I'm not counting the panic attacks because those are different, since the day you were released from the hospital. And I'm just worried that you're channeling all this energy into finding out what happened and what if you do? What happens when you don't have that anymore? You can't just use this to ignore what happened. You can't just... _distract_ yourself.” The way he says the last bit, looking away from her, it's almost like despair. Clarke doesn't quite understand it, but she knows she's still missing something.

“And?” she prompts.

“And what?”

“That's not all of it, is it? Why can't you look at me when you're talking about this?”

Bellamy rakes a hand through his hair. “Because I'm fucking enabling it, aren't I?

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means I think that might be what _I_ am.” He looks at her then, and he's all sharp angles at the moment and Clarke can't help but think she wants to draw him like this, despite the harshness of it all. Then his words sink in.

“Wait, are you saying you think _you're_ a distraction? That I'm using you,” she gestures between them, “this, to distract me from my father's death?” The accusation is both painful and infuriating.

“Not intentionally,” he says quietly. “But yeah, I think you might be.”

“Fuck you.” Clarke crosses her arms over her chest. “I would never do that. And for your information, I wanted _this_ before the accident. It's not my fault you were blind to it.” She's feeling kind of hollowed out and maybe it was a bad idea to ask him about this. When he's quiet, she rolls onto her side facing away from him, but that really doesn't feel any better. They need to clear the air.

“They're not distractions. _You're_ certainly not a distraction. I mean, it helps. I'm not gonna lie. Having something to do really helps, but I'm not just gonna collapse once I get answers. I'm actually...” she pauses, because she already has conflicted feelings about what this could mean and she hadn't intended to tell him until she was sure. She stares at the wall, hyper aware of Bellamy's presence to her back. “I've started filling out some applications to arts schools, but I'm not... I dunno. It might not be anything.”

She feels him shift against the mattress and then his arm is snaking around her waist, slow, giving her time to pull away, but she doesn't because no matter how much they're fighting, it always feels better being held by Bellamy than being alone.

“That's a great idea,” he says, his lips brushing the back of her neck as he speaks.

“You think so?” Clarke isn't so sure herself.

“Of course I do. Your sketches are amazing. I can only imagine what else you can do.”

Clarke turns in his arms to look at him again. “What about you?”  
“What about me?”

“Have you ever thought of getting your GED?”

Bellamy's nose scrunches up. “What's the point? I'll get hired for the same shit jobs and I might not even pass it. I haven't been in school in almost ten years.” The more time she spends with Bellamy the more she realizes how often he puts himself down. It's something that makes her want to scream. He's so much better than he seems to be able to accept.

“That's why you _study_ for it,” Clarke says. “And you'd totally nail it. You're pretty much the smartest person I know.”

“Says the med school student. Come on, I doubt that.”

“Med school _dropout_. I mean it. You have to know you're smart, Bell.”

He doesn't meet her eyes. “I get by.”

Clarke kisses his cheek, stealing his attention back. “Think about it, at least?”

“Sure.” But she doesn't believe him.

It's the next morning that she gets an ominous text from Jasper. _Clarke, can you meet me somewhere today? I learned something and I think we should talk about it in person. Maybe bring Bellamy._ Clarke's suddenly not so sure she wants to know what Jasper has to say, but she swallows her doubts. She doesn't have time to doubt this.

They meet Jasper at a coffee shop during Bellamy's lunch break, just in case Abby checks in and discovers he's not working. Clarke isn't sure if Jasper's practically vibrating with nervousness, or if he's just had too much espresso. He taps his fingers on the table and jiggles his knee up and down and takes so long to try to broach the subject that Clarke interrupts his mumbling.

“Jasper, what did you find?”

“It's not... It's not what you wanted, and I thought about just leaving it be and not telling you because maybe everything is better that way, but I just think... I guess you have a right to know.”

“Please, just spit it out.”

“Okay, right, just... Right, so I was going through some emails, not strictly legal, and I found this one that your mom sent to Kane, you know, the head of security for the campaign.” He turns the computer to face Bellamy and Clarke.

It's a long email, mostly full of plans for this party she'd been organizing and how to ensure security, so at first, Clarke doesn't even see it. Bellamy inhales sharply next to her and she scans faster. Her eyes catch on her name and she backs up and reads that sentence.

 _I think we should have a private detail on Clarke, not to her knowledge, obviously. Jake thinks I'm being paranoid, but I'm sure that the Wallaces were behind the hit on Wells and I'm not willing to take that chance with my daughter_.

Clarke reads it three times before it sinks in. _The hit on Wells._ She's suddenly back in that alley, a shortcut, he'd insisted, arms linked, a few stray snowflakes in the air.

“Clarke.” Bellamy's voice breaks her out of it. She leans back against Bellamy's chest and he wraps his arms around her, solid and reassuring.

“Oh my God,” she whispers.

“I'm sorry,” Jasper is suddenly very still. “Maybe I shouldn't have shown you.”

“No,” Clarke feels so detached all of a sudden, like she's floating and nothing can reach her. “I'm glad you did.”

Jasper smiles weakly. “I'll keep looking, okay? You know, for the other stuff.” He stands up, clearly dying to get the hell out of there and she doesn't stop him. She feels blank. She glances at Bellamy's face and maybe that's where all of her emotion is because he's got turmoil written all over him, but he doesn't say anything and they go back to her house. Bellamy goes back to work. Clarke goes to bed and sleeps all afternoon.

She wakes up to a note on her bedside table, similar to all those weeks ago when she'd first caught a glimpse of the Bellamy she knows now. She rubs her eyes and picks it up, yawning.

_Princess, went home to cook dinner. You looked too comfortable to wake up. If you're not home by seven, I'm eating without you. This is your warning, so no complaining, okay? -B_

Automatically, Clarke checks the clock, 5:30. He must not have left that long ago, then. The phrasing of the note hits her. She looks back to it, staring at the word 'home' in his messy scrawl. _If you're not_ _**home** _ **.** He's right, this place, this huge house where the ghosts of her father and Wells linger isn't her home, he is. Her heart thumps nearly painfully in her chest, a little panic edging in. It's hard enough for her, allowing herself to love someone, but having that person become your _home_ , that's a hell of a lot scarier. That's a hell of a lot more to lose.

He probably didn't even think about it, Clarke thinks, irritated. He probably just scrawled it down and it didn't cross his mind at all that he can't just _say_ things like that. Clarke takes a deep calming breath. She's making too much of things again.

She does make it back to the apartment before seven, and is greeted with chicken parmesan and Bellamy fiddling with the knobs on the oven.

“Hey.”

Bellamy turns around, concerned face on. “Hey, Princess.”

“What?” she asks, because he's looking at her like she might implode any minute.

“I just wasn't sure how you were dealing with everything,” he says carefully. For a moment, she thinks of his note and the word _home_ and how did he know she'd basically freak out over it? Then she remembers Wells. How the fuck had she forgotten about Wells?

“I- I don't think it's really sunk in yet,” she tells him, the world's biggest understatement. She'd _forgotten_. Clarke feels vaguely ill.

“Princess?” Clarke falls easily into Bellamy's arms, pressing her temple to his clavicle. He's so solid and gentle and _home_. He's home.

“I forgot,” she says very quietly. “I just completely forgot.” Bellamy rubs her back for a few minutes, before he presses a kiss to the top of her head and pulls back long enough to look down at her.

“Food?” he questions.

Clarke smiles weakly. “Yeah, food sounds good.” Things are mostly ready, so Clarke gets drinks while Bellamy throws the finishing touches on.

“Where's Octavia?” Clarke asks.

“Harper's.”

Clarke grins.

“What?”

“I'm just proud of you, letting her branch out and all.” Bellamy shrugs and ducks his head, but there's a pleased smile on his lips.

After dinner, they both curl up with books. Clarke is reading a book about Athena she'd picked off Bellamy's shelf. He rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded a lot like, _of course you'd go for that one_. He's still got his nose buried in the constellation book. Bellamy's phone buzzes.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he mutters. Clarke ignores him. Athena is actually really interesting.

“Octavia is spending the night at Harper's. Do you see this?” He waves his phone around in front of her face and she pushes his hand away.

“Shut up, Bell. I'm reading.”

“This isn't even a question, it's a statement. She's just _letting me know_ that she's doing this.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Oh, the horror. Your sister is spending the night at Harper's house. What ever will we do?”

Bellamy huffs and grumbles under his breath for a few moments before Clarke realizes exactly what's just been said. She snaps her book shut, causing Bellamy to look at her with raised eyebrows.

“Actually, I know exactly what we'll do.” She kisses him before he can ask, hard and dirty enough that he gets the message. He rolls his body on top of hers. She knows he's still irritated with Octavia because he kisses harder when he's mad, but she kind of likes kissing Bellamy when he's mad.

It doesn't all quite seem to register for him until they're both down to their underwear and Clarke skims her hands down his torso, admiring the way his abs contract when he breathes out. He catches her wrist just as she gets to his waistband.

“Clarke.” His pupils are blown, but he still manages to look concerned. She almost sighs because she's not really looking for a discussion at the moment, but she tamps down her annoyance and pushes up on her elbows to nip at his jaw.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure this is a good idea? I know you're upset about Wells and I just think... I don't want to take advantage of you.” She softens a little at his words because he's always thinking about what's best for her, even if it can get a little annoying.

“Pretty much everything in my life has sucked for ages now,” Clarke tells him, playing with the curls at the base of his neck, making little goosebumps break out across his skin. “And you're just about the only exception to that. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not made of glass. I know what I want.” She kisses him again, punctuating her statement and this time he doesn't argue, his hands sliding over her, pausing to remove her bra.

He reaches for the nightstand, fumbling a little bit with the drawer. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I don't have any condoms,” he says, groaning and pressing his face into her neck. Clarke always uses condoms, even though she's on the pill, mostly because she thinks you can never be too safe, not to mention she has trust issues, but this time it doesn't take her a moment to speak up.

“I'm on the pill.”

Bellamy gazes steadily at her for a moment. “You're sure about this?”

“I trust you.” _I love you_ , she thinks. Bellamy seems satisfied because he goes back to kissing her, hands slipping down to tug at her underwear. Clarke feels like Bellamy has lit a fire deep inside her that nothing but he can satisfy.

He angles his hips carefully before he pushes into her. Clarke's head falls back, gasping. It's been two years since she's been with a guy and her body is readjusting, stretching to accommodate his size. His teeth graze her neck and she can feel a slight tremble in his arms.

“Okay?” he whispers.

“Yes. More,” is all she manages, her heart pounding against her chest. Bellamy sets a pace, slow but hard, with sharp intense thrusts that make her feel like she's going to explode. She hooks her ankles behind him and she's pretty sure she says something along the lines of, _please_ , but she's not sure.

Clarke comes silently, head tilted back, chest heaving, trying to get enough breath. Bellamy curses into her neck as she orgasms, his thrusts becoming erratic as he follows her.

He tries to roll off her as his arms start to give, but she hooks her arms behind his neck and pulls him down on top of her instead. She likes his weight, even if it makes it just that much harder to breathe. He presses sloppy kisses on her neck and shoulder.

“Good?” he asks softly, almost self consciously. Clarke holds him a little tighter.

“Perfect.”

Clarke wakes up smiling and feeling a little bit like a lovestruck fool, but she can't bring herself to care. Her cell phone is buzzing lightly on the floor, where it had fallen out of the back pocket of her discarded jeans. She leans out of the bed to pick it up, careful not to wake Bellamy, who's lying on his stomach, face turned to the opposite wall.

It's only six AM and she immediately feels the urge to go back to sleep, but she resists. She has four texts from her mother, demanding to know where she's been. She ignores those and switches to her email, seeing a new one from Jasper. She clicks on it, not expecting much.

The man from her nightmares is staring back at her. Clarke almost drops the phone, muffling and yelp of surprise and quickly skims down the file. At the bottom, Jasper has written. _Looks like a likely candidate. Call me ASAP?_

Clarke glances back at Bellamy, sleeping peacefully, all the worry lines smoothed from his face. She makes a decision, guilt creeping up her throat. She leans over and presses a kiss to his cheek. He grumbles a little.

“Bell.”

“Mmmm...”

“ _Bell_.”

“What time is it?” he mumbles, rolling over to blink at her through half lidded eyes.

“Early. Listen, stuff came up with my mom and I've got to go. I'll see you this afternoon, okay?”

“Mmmmkay,” he hums sleepily. “You're okay, right?”

“I'm fine.” She kisses him before she goes, wanting more than anything to just stay here, where she's warm and happy and in love. “Go back to sleep,” she tells him, before gathering up her clothes and slipping out of his room.

She stops by her house for fresh clothes, which turns out to be a mistake because she runs into a supremely pissed off version of her mother. On the other hand, Clarke isn't feeling exactly charitable towards her mother these days either, so a fight might be just what she needs.

“Where have you been?” her mother's way of greeting.

“I don't really see how that's your business, Mom. I'm 22, not 15.”

“You're living under my roof. That makes it my business.”

Clarke crosses her arms. “Fine. If you must know, I've been sleeping at my boyfriend's.” She's never actually used the world “boyfriend” in relation to Bellamy before and it feels weird, not strong enough, if she's being honest.

“You didn't tell me you were seeing anyone.”

“You didn't ask.”

“Well I'm asking now. Who is he?”

Clarke shrugs. “You don't know him.” She figures it's not really a lie. Her mom _doesn't_ know Bellamy, not even a little bit. She barely acknowledges him as human being, even after he pretty much saved Clarke's life.

“Well, then maybe I should meet him.”

“Not gonna happen.” Clarke can hardly look at her mother. She knows nothing has been proven yet, but it's deep in her gut, that her mother is the cause of her father's death.

“And what does your boyfriend think about you going back to med school in the fall?”

“I'm not going back to med school, Mom.” Clarke's said it a thousand times.

“Well, you can't stay here another year.”

“I'm not.” Clarke crosses her arms and finally meets Abby's gaze. “I've applied to arts colleges.”

“That is unacceptable, Clarke. Art is not a career.” Clarke has no idea why her mother thinks she still has any sort of control over Clarke's life.

“I don't care what you say, Mom. It's my choice, I get to make this decision. Now, if you'll excuse me...” She'd intended to change before going to see Jasper, but she'd rather just get the hell out of the house, so she shoulders past her mother and hops into her car. She can see Abby standing in the doorway with her arms crossed as Clarke drives away.

Her meeting with Jasper turns up less answers than she would have liked. The employee file for her nightmare man is suspiciously empty. It's got a name, John Blackwell (which Clarke is pretty sure is fake) and a photo, the one Jasper had sent her. He seems to have been hired for tech, but Jasper's been interning in tech and has never seen him.

“There's nothing on him,” Jasper tells her, frowning in frustration. “There should be more here. Someone's either erased or buried the rest of his profile.”

“Or he never had one,” Clarke suggests. “Just enough that it would fool people who are skimming through, not specifically looking for him.”

“Either way, I'd doubt any of them would be stupid enough to order a hit in writing,” Jasper muses. He seems to have ditched any illusions that this is all some misunderstanding, which somehow makes Clarke feel both validated and sick.

“No, but if you find what the hit was ordered _for_. I have to believe they're hiding something big. I can't accept that my mom killed my dad over something petty.”

Jasper taps at his laptop keys, frustrated. “If it's there, I'll find it,” he promises. Clarke believes him, but it sort of feels like a threat.

She stops back at her house and, after assuring herself that her mother isn't home, ventures up to her room to take a shower. She's spent very little time in her room since her father's death, basically camping out at Bellamy's and she feels a little guilty that she's been taking over his life to such a great extent.

After her shower and frozen pizza she made for lunch, Clarke passes out on the sofa downstairs. She wakes up screaming. In all the nightmares she's had, she's never woken up this violently. Crying, shaking, unable to breathe, yes. But screaming is new for her. It takes her nearly an hour to shake the nightmare, one in which John Blackwell stabs her slowly, over and over again.

Her first instinct is to grab more stuff and go home to Bellamy, but halfway through packing a bag, she reconsiders. She's not blind. She's seen the way Bellamy's been walking around with set shoulders and a clenched jaw and occasional dark circles under his eyes. She knows she's the main cause. He worries about her constantly. It'll only be worse if she starts waking him up screaming. He's used to the panic attacks, but this? She can't put another burden on him. He spends so much of his time thinking about her, he deserves the same.

She waits until her heart is beating at a calm steady pace and her hands aren't shaking before she calls him. As the phone is ringing, she thinks she probably should have planned out what she was going to say, but it's too late now.

“Hey, Princess.” He sounds lighter than she's heard him in a while and that only serves to convince her not to burden him with this.

“Hey, Bell. I think I'm gonna have to stay here for a couple of nights. Things with Mom are bad and she's really on my ass about where I've been.”

“Are you okay? She didn't hit you again, did she?”

“No, no. I'm fine. I told her I've applied to arts school,” Clarke says.

“I'm guessing that didn't go over well.”

“That would be putting it lightly. I told her I wasn't going back to med school and she basically told me I can't live here any more, once fall comes.”

“She thought that would work?”

“Maybe. That's when I told her about arts school.”

“I wish I could have seen her face,” Bellamy is chuckling.

“Sheer horror,” Clarke tells him. Her stomach grumbles and she realizes it's getting to be late afternoon. She'll have to figure out her own dinner if she's staying here and she's suddenly lonely for dinner with Bellamy and Octavia, but she shoves it down. She's doing this _for_ Bellamy, because she loves him.

“I'll call you later, okay?”

“Don't get too wild without me, Princess.”

“No promises.”

She stays at her house for four nights and wakes up screaming every single one. The first night, her mother had burst into her room, completely disheveled, eyes wide.

“Clarke!”  
“It's fine,” Clarke sits up, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Just a nightmare.” After that first night, Abby doesn't return to her room. She doesn't know if her mother bought earplugs, or just doesn't bother to check on her, but either way, Abby doesn't make an appearance again.

She sees Bellamy when he comes in for work, but not after and it's weird and makes her miss him, which she finds a little ridiculous, but doesn't stop her from missing him. It's not like she just doesn't see him. He works full time at her house with little to no supervision. They talk a lot and once, make out against the wall in the hallway to her bedroom, a hot clash of tongues and groping hands, until Bellamy pulls away because he actually has work to do. She still sees him plenty, but she can feel the weight of the secrets she's keeping.

She goes out to lunch with Monty as a distraction. Then she feels bad about thinking of it as a distraction because Monty is sweet and a great friend and insists on buying her food. After lunch, they go to a bookstore and browse the shelves talking quietly. Monty tells her he's going to meet Miller's (Nate as he calls him) dad that weekend and admits to being a little nervous. Clarke feels a burst of happiness for her friends. She's assures Monty that Miller's dad will love him. It's pretty much impossible not to love Monty.

They're just about to leave when she spies the book, unable to contain a huge grin. Monty follows her gaze and, after a moment of confusion, starts laughing.

“You have to buy it.”

She does. Her first instinct is to go straight back to her house to find Bellamy, but after she calms down a little, she realizes it's Friday, and he'll be back at his apartment in a few hours for the weekend anyway. So instead, she goes to the big park in the middle of downtown and sketches until she loses track of time.

On her way to Bellamy's apartment, her excitement resurfaces. Clarke practically runs up the steps to the apartment, giddy with excitement. She bursts through the door and Bellamy looks up, startled. He's got the crossword clutched in one hand, dork, and a cup of coffee in the other, genius.

“Clarke?”

“Look what I got!” she holds up the book and skips over to him. It's ridiculously heavy with probably the tiniest print she's ever seen. It's a 900 page biography of Augustus. “And they even were able to interview this guy who collects stuff from-” Clarke crinkles her nose, “-Okay, so I don't exactly what to call the time period that Augustus was in- don't laugh- I _do_ listen to you, I just don't have a freakish history brain-”

“-I'm in love with you.”

“What?” Clarke's head snaps up from the book to look at him. He's got an almost dazed expression on his face, except his eyes are so bright.

“I'm so unbelievably in love with you,” he says.

“Oh.” Clarke glances back down at the book, her heart pounding. “Because I got you a book?”

Bellamy laughs and takes the book out of her hands, setting it on the kitchen table as he stands up. “No. For a lot longer than that.” He pulls her in, pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek. “You just caught me off guard. It kind of just tumbled out.”

“Oh, good.”

“Good?”

“I'm in love with you too. Like a lot. It kind of scares me. So yes, good.” Clarke blushes. That was probably the least elegant way to tell someone you're in love with them ever. But Bellamy only laughs, a real one, that rumbles in his chest and shoots fondness straight to her heart.

“Good,” he repeats, laughter still in his eyes. “I, uh,” he looks suddenly bashful. “I actually got you something too.”

“You did?” Clarke wonders what the odds are of that. It's not like it's a special occasion. Bellamy stuffs his hand in his pocket and produces a key, holding it out flat in his palm. Clarke stares at it for a few moments, uncomprehending, before picking it up. It doesn't matter that Bellamy is notoriously bad at remembering to lock his door, the meaning of the key still flares something intense and hungry in her chest.

“I want you to know that you're welcome here anytime. This is your place too.”

Clarke pushes onto her tiptoes to kiss him. It's slow and fierce and fills her up to the brim, making her feel raw and open. When they're both breathless, they pull back, but stay intertwined in the kitchen, foreheads resting on each other's, eyes closed.

“Ehem.” They break apart to find Octavia standing there, eyebrows raised. Bellamy clears his throat, a slow blush rising up his cheeks, and gets started on dinner, ignoring Octavia's occasional sly comment. The intensity of the moment doesn't wear off, though, and Clarke finds herself using every excuse to stay in contact with Bellamy. Sometimes, she doesn't even have an excuse. She stands behind him, arms around his waist and her cheek pressed to the back of his shoulders as he stirs sauce for the pasta. She hadn't intended to stay for dinner and definitely not the night, but the idea of leaving is unbearable, so she swallows her concerns.

After dinner, Octavia insists on watching a movie that all her friends have been talking about, so Bellamy and Clarke curl up together on one end of the sofa. Clarke tries to watch, but she keeps being distracted Bellamy, who's alternating between kissing and gently biting at different parts of her neck, jaw, and ear. As the credits are rolling, Octavia stands up, takes one look at them, and sighs.

“Earplugs sort of night it is, then,” she mutters, heading off towards her room. She tosses a, “Try to at least make it to your bedroom, please!” over her shoulder as she goes.

They do make it to the bedroom, kissing and laughing, and fall into bed together easily. Clarke feels an undefinable feeling rise in her chest as they make love, swelling and impossible to ignore and she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry because all she can think is that she's never loved anyone like she loves Bellamy and she doesn't think she'll survive it if she loses him.

She falls asleep, skin on skin, whispered declarations of love on her lips. She wakes up screaming. She's so disoriented that by the time she realizes where she is, that her nightmare was just that, Bellamy's got her cradled in his arms, murmuring gentle things to her. She can feel his heart pounding fiercely in his chest and she knows she's scared him, exactly what she didn't want to have happen.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers against his collarbone.

“Hey, no, it's not your fault.”

“I didn't want to worry you with these,” she says very quietly, all the while trying to press closer to him, like maybe she can sink under his skin and live there, where everything is good and safe.

Bellamy catches on quickly. “This is why you've been sleeping at your house?”

Clarke sighs. “Jasper found a picture of the guy... from the accident. I guess it triggered these nightmares. I didn't want you to worry more.”

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, gently, but with exhaustion. “Of course I'm going to worry. But it'll be a lot worse if I think you're keeping things like this from me. I don't care if you wake me up every night for the rest of my life, I want to know.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispers again. She doesn't know what she ever did to deserve someone like Bellamy, but she's not letting go of him for anything.

“Don't be sorry,” he kisses the top of her head and lies back, bringing her with him. “Try to sleep.” Surprisingly, she does, and she doesn't wake up again until well after the sun is shining.

She hangs out with Octavia on Saturday, feeling guilty that a lot of her plans with the girl have been disrupted by the chaos in her life and her preoccupation with Bellamy. They go bowling, which they both suck at. Octavia laughs until there are tears in her eyes when Clarke accidentally throws her ball into another lane entirely.

They eat bad pizza and buy lots of candy that will probably make them sick. Octavia's chewing on a sour gummy worm when she looks at Clarke with calculating eyes.

“I know there's something going on that you and Bell won't tell me.”

Clarke chokes on her soda. “O...”

“No, it's okay, I get it. Bellamy has _always_ shielded me from crap that's going on, so it's easy for me to spot when he's doing it these days. But it kind of scares me because I can tell he's really scared about something.”

Clarke picks at her pizza. “I know he is. It's... It's kind of hard to explain and Bellamy would _kill_ me if I got you involved, but I guess you can know that there's some stuff going on with my mother, with her campaign and her relationship with me and they aren't good.”

Octavia's eyes soften. “I really do understand, Clarke. I just want you to know that I'm here for you too, even if Bellamy wants to protect me from it.”

“Thank you,” Clarke whispers. They go back to bowling and they don't talk about it again, but once or twice Clarke catches Octavia watching her with eyes that look much too wise for her age.

On Tuesday, Abby walks in on Clarke and Bellamy in Clarke's bed. It's pretty much the worst case scenario, both of them entirely naked, Clarke's hands braced on Bellamy's chest as she rolls her hips so that he hits just the right spot. Clarke would be hard pressed to say just how they'd gotten to this point, other than she and Bellamy have had a hard time keeping their hands off each other since Friday night when he'd first whispered “I love yous” into her skin. At some point, that had extended to include his work.

Her mother enters the room, as usual, with no announcement, already launching in to whatever she's going to say before she registers the situation, her face going slack with shock. Clarke reacts first, scrambling for a blanket, muttering, “shit, shit, shit.” Bellamy moves slower, reaches for his underwear. He stands up, completely naked, and tugs it on, not even a hint of a blush on his cheeks, before turning a challenging gaze on her mother.

Abby's face is bright red, her eyes flashing. “Clarke, downstairs. _Now_.” She turns on her heel, slamming the door behind her. Clarke stays frozen for a few moments, clutching the blanket to her chest, feeling shell shocked.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Clarke shakes her head as she finally stands up, throwing on her clothing. “No. It'll just make her angrier.” She turns to him, and he looks so calm, hardly fazed at all. She steps over to him and rests her forehead on his chest, taking a deep breath.

“I guess I should start looking for jobs,” he says, humor in his tone, but she knows he's serious.

Clarke looks up at him. “No. I'll take care of it.”

“Clarke.”

“I'll take care of it,” she repeats, kissing him on the cheek and turning towards the door.

Abby is in the kitchen, drinking a large glass of wine. Clarke rolls her eyes at her mother's dramatics. It's not like she'd caught Clarke in the middle of a murder or anything.

“You had something you wanted to say to me.” Clarke makes a conscious effort not to cross her arms to protect herself from Abby's words.

“What are you _thinking_ , Clarke?”

“I'm thinking that I'm twenty two and have nothing to be ashamed of. It's not my fault you don't knock. I told you I had a boyfriend.”

Abby snorts. “A boyfriend? _Please._ You're _fucking the help_.”

Clarke feels her anger flare up. “No, Mom. That's what you _wish_ I was doing because that would be a lot more convenient for you, wouldn't it? But that's not what this is.”

“Did you even think about this family at all, Clarke? Do you know how this is going to look for the campaign? Abigail Griffin's daughter dating the _handyman_?”

“I really don't care how you feel about it, Mom.”

“Clarke, sweetie, I'm just trying to help you. You've been through a lot in the past year. You're not yourself.” Her mother is using her gentle technique. Clarke's seen her snap it off and on enough to know when she's being manipulated.

Clarke crosses her arms, giving up on her quest not to seem defensive. “How would _you_ know? When is the last time you actually listened to me, Mom? Bellamy knows me a hell of a lot better than you do.”

“You might think you love him, sweetheart, but love is a lot more complicated than you think.”

Clarke tries to hold down the fury that wants to surface. Like her mother has any right to lecture her on _love_ , when the man she married died most likely by her hand and she didn't so much as take a day off work.

“I know what love is, Mom. I know that he loves me, _me_ , not this version of who I could be that he's put together in his head the way you do.”

Abby squares her shoulders. “You're naïve if you don't think this is about money. And I'm not going to let him take advantage of you.”

“You're not going to fire him.”

“What would possibly stop me?” Her mother's gone completely cold again, chin up, battle face on.

“Because if you fire him, I have no reason to stay here. I'll pack my bags and I'll go and you'll never see me again. How do you think _that's_ going to look for your campaign?”

Her mother's lips flatten into a thin line, but Clarke can see the calculation behind her eyes and she knows she's won. At least for now, there's nothing her mother can do.

She sleeps fitfully that night, though without nightmares, tossing and turning until Bellamy gathers her close and starts whispering Greek myths in a sleepy mumble. She falls into a deep sleep, then, but dreams about being lost in a maze with no exit.

Jasper calls her midmorning, his voice low and serious. “Can you come to my place. I know what your father knew.”

Jasper and Monty share an old house on the edge of downtown, built sometime during the late 1880s. It was once grand, but is now falling apart, the front steps sagging and the paint peeling. Clarke has been here a few times for movie night or to visit Monty, but she's never walked up those steps with her heart in her throat before. Bellamy had offered to join her, but Clarke's already concerned about his job security without him taking more unauthorized time off, so she'd declined the offer.

Monty answers the door, a smile on his face that tells her he knows there's something going on, but he only hugs her and says, “Jasper's upstairs.”

Jasper's bedroom looks like something exploded in it. It's full of gadgets, computers, and vials and beakers of chemicals that Clarke is afraid to go near. He's sitting in the middle of it all, tapping furiously at his laptop. He looks up when Clarke enters, expression grim.

“I've got it,” he says, by way of greeting.

“Okay,” Clarke perches on the edge of his bed. “I want to know.”

There's a lot of fancy financial words and records Clarke doesn't know how to follow, but she gets the gist of it. There had been money that Abby's organization (a “non profit”) had raised to have a clean water project for developing countries launched. The problem was, someone had siphoned off a lot of money to the campaign and, in order to cover it up, they'd done a shoddy job with the water purification project. This, in turn, had caused several thousand people to become ill or die from diseases from the supposedly clean water. Jasper was able to decipher, from some emails that Abby had tried to erase, that Jake knew about the corners being cut in the project and felt that everyone deserved to know and that hopefully, some lives could be saved.

“It would ruin any of her political aspirations,” Jasper says, he looks decidedly uncomfortable. “They disagreed on a fundamental level. Abby believes that if she is able to get elected, hence all the money that's being diverted to the campaign, she'll be able to do more good than the damage that this project caused. Your father, obviously, disagreed with her. You've got her on that, Clarke. If you turn that information in to the authorities, she'll never have a political career. She'll go to jail.

“I've also got proof that Blackwell is a hit man, which makes it very unlikely that your father _wasn't_ a hit. And I've got proof he's was hired by your mother's campaign, as well, but there's no proof that she ordered a hit on your father. I don't know if there's any way she could be convicted for that. It's suspicious, obviously, but you're the only witness that Blackwell is the one who ran you two off the road. That's a stretch for a conviction.”

Clarke feels a numb sort of acceptance. She's been preparing herself for something like this for weeks. Still, hearing it feels surreal. Some little piece of her had wanted to believe that she was wrong, that her father's death was an accident and that her parents weren't arguing about anything serious.

“There's something else,” Jasper says apologetically.

“More?”

“Your, uh, your mom's covered up your dad's will.”

“What?”

“Clarke, your dad left everything to you, not her. The house, his money, _everything_. It's yours.”

The information doesn't quite sink in all the way. It registers, absently, but it's hard to believe it's reality. Even with all the information and evidence piling up against her mother, it's hard to believe that Abby would do that to her.

“Oh.” Clarke takes a deep breath. “I'm gonna go get a glass of water.”

Monty is in the kitchen, humming and watering the houseplants, but he stops when he sees her face, eyes wide.

“Clarke, what's wrong?”

She sinks into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, shaking her head. “I don't know what to do.”

“Okay.” Monty takes the seat next to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. “About what?”

“About _anything.”_ And all her concerns and fears and the information about her mother seems like too much all of a sudden. She's in limbo, hanging in a space with all these decisions facing her and she doesn't know what the right choices to make are.

“My dad left me the house,” she whispers, “and I've applied to arts school and my mom and I aren't likely to even be on speaking terms soon and I kind of just want to sell the house and leave, go to school and start over. But Bell's here.”

Monty's face softens. “I think you need to think about what's going to be best for you in long run, Clarke. If that means you stay or if that means you go, that's what you have to figure out.”

Clarke slumps over the table, trying to remember to breathe. “What if none of those things are what I want?”

“Then figure out what is.” Monty sits next to her, rubbing her back until Jasper comes down to check on her and the two insist on taking her out to dinner. And while Monty's in the bathroom Jasper says quietly, “Whenever you're ready, just let me know what you want to do with the information. It can stay buried.” Clarke gives him a grateful nod and just wishes she had any answers at all.

She's not surprised when Bellamy reacts furiously to the information Jasper had found. His eyes go dark and he launches into a tirade about playing God and not valuing other people's lives. Clarke's thought it all herself, so she tunes it out and presses her cheek to his chest as he rants, listens to his heartbeat instead, steady and slightly elevated.

“Can we talk about something else?” she requests, finally, when the sun starts to sink and Bellamy shows no signs of letting up.

“Okay,” his eyes soften. “Like what?”

“Like,” Clarke reaches for her bag and digs around for the book she'd bought earlier that week. She holds it up and Bellamy's brow furrows.

“Clarke.”

“You said you'd think about it,” she insists, trying to hand it to him. He takes it reluctantly, face still protesting.

“I'm not taking the GED.” He holds up the study guide, frowning fiercely.

“I might have already signed you up.”

“Fuck, Clarke, you can't just do stuff like that.” He shakes his head. “I'll never pass it.”

“Yes, you will.” She hates the way he looks down on himself and makes a mental note not to ever tell him about the $120 fee she'd paid for his slot. He'd never take it. “I'll study with you. You're too smart to limit yourself like this, Bell. You _know_ you're smarter than 90% of kids with a high school degree. People should know that. If you get this, then you could even apply and take some classes at a community college. You could find something you really want to do. You could do history. You could _teach_ , Bell. Don't act like you don't want it, I know you do.” He runs a hand over his face in exasperation, but his shoulders are slightly looser than they'd been before.

“It's not about wanting it or not, Clarke,” he says finally, quietly. “Even if I do get the GED, I can't afford to spend money on classes for me. I have to save that for O.”

“So we'll get you scholarships.” Clarke, who's pretty sure whatever money her father left her is a sizable amount, would offer to pay for it herself if she ever thought he would take it, but she knows he won't.

“Clarke.”

“ _Please_ ,” she asks, pleading. “Please do this for yourself? I really don't think you'll regret it.”

He sighs hugely, uncertainty scrawled across his face, but gives in. “Okay. I guess I'll... Yeah okay.”

Clarke lets out a very undignified squeal of delight and hugs him tightly, grinning against his chest. She wants this for him, more than she's ever really wanted anything for herself. She just hopes he'll go through with it.

It turns out Clarke worries about Bellamy's commitment for no reason. It seems that once he'd accepted taking the test, he'd dove into it full force. He's constantly absorbed in study material, eyes moving quickly over the pages, making little noises of interest or irritation or agreement. He's constantly asking Clarke to quiz him, grinning hugely when he's right, which is more often than not. She's always known Bellamy was smart and curious, a born academic, but she's never seen him quite this happy, lit up with interest and inquisition. It's almost enough to make her forget about all the hard decisions facing her.

Three days before he's set to take the GED, Clarke's sitting on the living room sofa, organizing note cards for a last minute study session. This is where Octavia finds her. Bellamy is out at the grocery store buying tomatoes for his home made spaghetti sauce.

“Hey, O,” Clarke says absently as she sorts questions into categories.

“Hey.” Octavia sinks on to the sofa next to her. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure,” Clarke is still a bit distracted, so she misses the serious look on Octavia's face.

“I'm thinking about sleeping with Atom.”

“What?” Clarke stops sorting cards immediately.

Octavia bites her lip looking worried. “I thought about not bringing it up to you because I know you hate having to keep things from Bellamy, but I really, really wanted to talk to someone about it and I know you won't yell at me and I trust your judgment and I really need some advice,” she says all at once and very fast.

“Okay,” Clarke says slowly, treading carefully. “Okay. Can you tell me why you've been thinking about this? Is it something that you feel you want and are ready for, or is it outside pressure?”

Octavia stares at her hands, her manner more subdued than Clarke is used to. “It's me. I just... I mean, I'm not stupid, or anything. I know it's statistically unlikely that I'll end up with Atom, but that doesn't change how I feel about him now. I don't want to be someone who's always just waiting for something and it just builds up until you can't possibly meet those expectations.”

Clarke nods, biting her lip. “Okay, I get that. I mean, you're young and I guarantee that this isn't just an option that's going to go away, but you should be honest with how you feel. And it's not really a decision anybody else can make for you. I know that Bellamy would tell you not to and I know you know that too. I don't want to push you one way or another, O. I just want you to be happy and safe and not do something that you feel you're going to regret. My first time was when I was a sophomore in high school and, even though that was with a girl, so it was slightly different, I never regretted that. But I do think it's something that you should be sure about, okay? So if you're talking to me because you're not sure, my advice would be to wait until you _are_ sure.”

Octavia nods once, a small smile curling over her lips. “Thanks, Clarke.” She scoots over and leans into Clarke's side, resting her head on Clarke's shoulder.

“You can always talk to me, you know? I mean, sometimes my advice might be, 'You have to tell your brother,' but I'll always listen.” Clarke puts her arm around Octavia's shoulder. Octavia is strong and smart and Clarke trusts her to make good decisions, she just hopes she doesn't do anything that she'll feel is a terrible mistake.

The morning of Bellamy's GED test he's very quiet. He doesn't eat much and Clarke knows he's nervous just like she knows he'd never ever tell her that. She drives him to the testing center and climbs out of the car after him, catching his hand before he can go in. He stops, looking at her, but his eyes are distant and closed off.

“You'll be fine,” she says, kissing his cheek, and he nods absently before going in. Clarke has some time to kill while he's testing, so she goes to a nearby coffee shop and sits in one of the armchairs sipping a latte and trying not to feel nervous for him. She knows she hasn't succeeded when someone says her name with concern.

She looks up. “Oh, hey.” It's Monroe, carrying a large glass of what appears to be herbal tea.

Monroe smiles. “Clarke, I haven't seen you in forever. What are you doing on this side of town?”

“Waiting for Bell. He's taking the GED.” She bites her lip, not sure if Bellamy's been keeping that information to himself or not.

“Oh, yeah, Miller said something about that,” Monroe responds, soothing Clarke's worry. “I was so surprised when I found out he never graduated high school, he's such a nerd.”

Clarke laughs. “Yeah, he really is.” Monroe drinks her tea and chats with Clarke about her studies, she's a sociology major, before waving goodbye. Clarke spends the rest of the time trying to read and failing spectacularly.

It's a relief to get back into her car and drive back to the testing center. She's a little early, so she climbs out of her car and leans on the driver's side door, waiting. The last of her stress lifts when Bellamy emerges, the smallest smile on his lips.

He scoops her up when he gets to her, spinning her around once, before kissing her. He tries to keep up the kiss, but he can't stop smiling.

“How'd it go?” Clarke asks, even though she doesn't have to, because his smile and high spirits says it all.

“Won't get my results for a while.”

“But?”

“But it felt good. It felt really good, Princess.” Clarke laughs and hugs him tighter, happiness swelling in her.

“I'm so proud of you,” she murmurs, burying her face in his neck, smiling like a maniac.

“It's because of you,” he says softly. “You make me feel like I could be something, Clarke. Something more and better than I thought.”

And even through her happiness, Clarke aches, because she's thinking about the stack of acceptance letters to arts schools that's at the bottom of her purse and she's thinking about distance and she's thinking she doesn't believe she has it in her to stay and she also doesn't have it in her to leave Bellamy behind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, this took a little longer than I expected. I have a personal rule when I'm writing multi-chapter fics, which is that I don't post a chapter until the next chapter is written. I do this to try to make sure I finish everything I start (I had trouble with this before I implemented this rule for myself) so chapter five had me struggling a little bit. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this installment! Only one more chapter to go! Since chapter 5 is fully written and just needs editing, it should be up within a couple of days. Thank you all so much for all your great reviews. I appreciate every single one!


	5. Heaven Is On Fire

 

“ _'Cause all I see is black and white_

_in the darkness of the night._

_Oh, and I've been chasing angels all my life._

_And now that Heaven is on fire_

_and the world is technicolor,_

_I'll be chasing angels all my life.”_

The day Clarke makes the decision to turn her mother in, she drags Bellamy to his bedroom and demands he take her mind off of it. She's got plans to give Jasper the go ahead to turn in all the evidence he's collected first thing in the morning, and it scares him a little bit how untouched she seems by it all, even if she is asking for a distraction in the form of his touch.

He wants to talk to her about it, but he knows he hasn't been the easiest person to talk to about all this because he's so scared for her. He's scared beyond what he's even been able to voice. Maybe Abby wouldn't hurt Clarke, he's not sure after what happened to Jake, but what about Jaha? What about the other people that are going to go down when this comes out?

The hit on Wells makes everything worse. Not only is Clarke putting herself in danger by investigating her mother, it hasn't even seemed to occur to her that she might already be a target to someone else. Whoever these Wallace people are, they _killed_ Wells for being Jaha's son, Clarke could very easily be next on that list. He hasn't even said a word about that because he knows she thinks he worries too much already. He wonders if she understands that he'd rather worry about her than not know what's going on.

If there's one thing that Bellamy Blake can't stand, it's feeling powerless. He's been there way too much in his life, and the fact that he's there once again, unable to fix the mess that Clarke is in, makes him sick. Being able to protect the people he loves is the only thing that he really wants and it's not something he'll ever be guaranteed.

Things move shockingly quickly after Clarke makes her decision. Bellamy doesn't understand the logistics of it all, he leaves that up to Jasper and Clarke, but he does know that not a week later, Abby and Jaha are both escorted out of the campaign offices in handcuffs. It's a little disturbing to him how quickly Clarke seems to recover. One day she's curled in their bed, crying and trembling and clinging to him and the next she's dressed in a pressed dress and towering Louboutins and off to court with ice in her eyes.

He knows that Clarke has a lot of practice pretending to be okay when she's not and smiling at people she doesn't want to smile at, but this is different. This is constant. It reminds him a little of how she'd just stopped crying after her dad had died, bottling it all up and focussing on figuring out why, but this time he feels like he's on the other side of it, like he's being shut out as well. He knows Clarke isn't okay. She can't hide the panic attacks at night, but it's the only time he sees her vulnerable.

It doesn't help that the media is all over her. _Abby Griffin's daughter exposes all her dirty secrets._ The attention isn't something he'd been expecting and he knows Clarke isn't looking for it, but her face is everywhere, in the papers, on TV, all over the internet. The story goes viral and even though Clarke turns down interviews, that doesn't seem to stop anyone. The Clarke that looks back at him from photos or on TV doesn't look like _his_ princess, she's remote and cold and she reminds Bellamy of Abby more than anyone else, not that he would ever tell her that. And as more of Abby's crimes come out, the focus on Clarke only increases. It's yet another thing he can't seem to shield her from.

They can't charge Abby with Jake's death. Even with Clarke's testimony, there's absolutely no evidence that Abby ordered a hit on Jake. The only person who could confirm that would be Blackwell and no one seems to know who he is or where he's gone. But the rest of the accusations are solid and there's no doubt in Bellamy's mind that Abby will be in jail for many, many years.

He gets the phone call around 11 PM. It's not surprising to see Clarke's name, she calls him more than anyone else, but it is surprising to hear another girl's voice on the end of the line.

“Is this Bell?”

“Yes?” He's struggling to stay calm. He feels like he doesn't know what's going on with Clarke most of the time these days.

“Oh, thank God. I'm a bartender at Lulu's. There's this blonde girl here who's like, drunk out of her mind, so much tequila, and all I could get out of her was to 'Call Bell' and this contact says Bell with a little heart next to it, so I figured that's what she meant.”

“Is she okay?” Fuck. Clarke's supposed to be with Monty. What the hell is she doing at a bar downtown? He's digging around in his closet looking for his left shoe.

“She was crying earlier, but I think she's stopped.”

Bellamy sighs. “I'm on my way. Don't let her leave.” He hangs up, hopping towards the doorway while he tugs on his shoes.

“I'm going to pick up Clarke!” he yells over his shoulder in the general direction of Octavia's room. He doesn't wait for her answer. He should have seen this coming. He knew Clarke was too together through this all. Her outer cool had to collapse sometime.

She's sitting at the bar, staring into what thankfully turns out to be a glass of water when he shows up. The bartender, the girl he assumes called him, is leaning over the bar to talk to her.

“Clarke,” he says, as he steps up to the bar, placing a hand on her shoulders. She twists around too fast, losing her balance. Her eyes are bright and unfocused.

“Bell!” She nearly falls out of her chair trying to hug him. He steadies her, shooting an apologetic look at the bartender, who's watching with amused eyes.

“I take it you're the boyfriend?” the girl asks, eyebrows raised.

“He's _mine,_ ” Clarke interjects, her words slow, but adamant, tugging Bellamy closer to her and kissing his neck. She shoots a glare at the bartender, who she'd been smiling at moments before.

“Okay, time to get you home.” Bellamy hoists her to her feet, keeping his arms around her. He's supporting a large portion of her weight and she's giggling, trying to keep her lips in contact with his neck.

“Don't forget her phone.” The bartender holds out Clarke's cell phone, and he takes it, stuffing it in his back pocket. He's never had to deal with incredibly drunk Clarke before and it turns out she goes from “touchy Clarke” to “inappropriately touchy Clarke” very fast. He tries to steer her towards the door, but she stumbles over her own feet and if he weren't holding on to her, she would have fallen.

“Princess, you gotta help me out a little bit here.” Clarke braces her hands on his shoulders and hops, wrapping her legs a bit clumsily around his waist.

“Carry me!” she demands. It's not really what Bellamy had in mind, but it's probably the best he's going to get. A lot of other people in the bar are watching them, expressions ranging from disapproving to amused. Clarke's tugging on his earlobe with her teeth and pressing sloppy kisses to his cheek and jaw, but he manages to get her out to the truck.

He gets her in the passenger seat before she starts protesting. “My car! We can't leave my car!”

Clarke is overly attached to her car. “Okay. Where are your keys?”

Clarke frowns, an exaggerated pout forming on her face. It's weird because even though she's incredibly intoxicated and undeniably difficult, Bellamy can't help but feel grateful that he's seeing her so open for the first time in weeks.

“Your keys, Clarke?”

“Oh. _Oh_.” She produces her keys from down the front of her shirt.

“Where's your purse?”

Clarke thinks for several moments. “Monty's?”

“Okay,” Bellamy takes a deep breath and extracts her from the truck. She follows him willingly, hopping back into his arms with a giggle. He backs up, closing and locking the doors, before carrying Clarke across the parking lot to Clarke's car.

He puts Clarke in the back, so she can lie down, and gets into the driver's seat. She has the seat so far forward he slams his knees into the steering wheel. He curses and fumbles for the lever to push the seat back. He forgets how freaking tiny Clarke is sometimes.

She falls asleep on the way home, and only wakes up enough to nuzzle into his chest when he carries her inside. Octavia is in the living room, watching a crime show. She looks up when he nudges the door open with his foot.

“Is she okay?” Octavia's half standing as she asks.

“She's fine, just really, really trashed.”

Octavia smiles sadly and sits back down. “I figured it would all catch up to her sometime.”

Bellamy grimaces in agreement. “I'm gonna put her to bed.” Clarke whines and reaches for him when he deposits her in bed, trying to pull him back to her.

“We need to get some water in you, Princess. I'll be back in a minute.”

When he gets back, Clarke's sitting up in bed, blinking around in a confused manner. She smiles when she sees him, a slow, wide smile, curling up the corners of her lips. Even though she's a total mess, her looking at him like that makes his heart stutter in his chest. He's ridiculously in love with her.

“Okay, Princess, let's try to get you hydrated.” He helps her drink from the glass because he doesn't really trust she won't drop it. It takes a few minutes for him to convince her to drink the whole glass.

He goes back to the kitchen to put the glass in the sink and when he steps back into the bedroom, Clarke's half undressed. She'd managed to get her shirt off and her pants unbuttoned before giving up. She's glaring furiously at her zipper.

“Do you want to change for bed?”

Clarke looks at him, shaking her head. “I want to have sex.” He's not expecting that and for a second, it throws him, just standing in the doorway staring at her.

“Yeah, not tonight, Princess.”

“Why not?” Clarke sounds so demanding he nearly laughs, but instead he steps over to the bed and pulls her to her feet so he can help her strip her jeans off. They're as tight as they look.

“First of all, you're incredibly drunk,” he tells her as he works her jeans down her legs.

“So?”

“So, not only is that actually illegal, I much prefer you functional.”

“I'm func-” she frowns in irritation, clearly stuck on the word. “I'm fine.”

Bellamy ignores her as he reaches for one of his t-shirts for her to sleep in. “Secondly, you're nearly passed out, also illegal. And lastly, you're kind of an emotional mess, Clarke.”

He gets the shirt over her head. “I know,” she says quietly. “I'm sorry.”

“There's nothing to be sorry for.” He's told her this a lot in the past few weeks, but clearly it isn't breaking through to her. She crawls into the bed, suddenly looking small and dejected. He sighs and shucks his clothes until he's down to his underwear and crawls in next to her, kissing her cheek.

She rolls to face him and buries her face in his chest. “I love you a lot, Bell.”

“Love you more, Princess.”

Clarke lets out a little sigh, mumbling against his skin. He barely catches what she's saying before she falls asleep, but he thinks it's, _You're mine_. She's not wrong.

Clarke sleeps late the next day. When she does get up, sometime after noon, she treks straight to the shower. She emerges 30 minutes later and stumbles around the apartment still half asleep in sweatpants and a t-shirt and trailing a throw blanket, struggling to make coffee until Bellamy takes pity on her and does it himself.

“You should eat something, soak up the alcohol,” he suggests. Clarke nods, very quiet, until she's three cups of coffee, a bagel, and a plate full of scrambled eggs (courtesy of Bellamy) in, and then she looks up at him suddenly.

“Why aren't you at work?” Bellamy finds himself blinking at her in surprise. He knows Clarke's been out of it, but apparently he'd underestimated how much.

“Clarke, your mom's in jail, on trial for things that will certainly cause her to stay there. Who's going to pay me to take care of that house?”

Clarke stares blankly at him for a long moment before she begins to cry.

“Whoa, hey, no.” He pushes his chair back to move to Clarke's side where there are tears streaming down her cheeks. “What's wrong?”

“I didn't even think,” she's crying harder. “I didn't- And now I've fucked up your life too.”

“Clarke, it's not your fault.”

She shakes her head. “I want you to be mad at me.”

“What?” He wonders if Clarke is still a little drunk.

“You should be _mad_ at me,” she says through her tears. “I live in your apartment and eat your food and then I destroy your job and wake you up at night with panic attacks and screaming and I get drunk and you have to come pick me up and you should be mad at me! And instead you're all calm and forgiving and I don't get it!”

The truth is, he wasn't calm when he realized his job was just going to cease to exist. He'd spent a whole day crunching numbers and checking bank accounts and driving around town looking for places he could apply. It's just not Clarke's fault.

“Princess, your dad died and your mom committed a bunch of crimes and that's why I don't have a job and neither of those things are your fault. I've got a bunch of applications and I'll find something else. Everything's going to be fine.” Clarke's still crying and he doesn't know if there's anything he can say to get her to stop.

“Hey, listen, I was gonna save this for later, but you look like you could use some good news...”

She bites her lip and slows her breathing, attention on him.

“I got my GED results. I passed.” He feels a little awkward telling her this, not because he isn't proud because he _is,_ but because he doesn't really like praise. He's not even sure why, just that it makes him uncomfortable, being told he's good in some way, maybe because he's never really felt like it rings true. Clarke blinks at him with shining, watery eyes for a moment, a tiny smile starting to lift her lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I knew you would.” Her voice is quiet, but steadier than it was before. “You're so smart and capable, Bell.”

He feels heat rush to the tips of his ears and he shrugs. “You don't have to worry about my job, okay? I'll get one. And thanks to you, I now have more qualifications for that.” He kisses her cheek. The last thing Clarke needs right now is to worry about him. He just wants her to get through Abby's trial so she can try to move on with her life.

The day of Abby's sentencing, Bellamy joins Clarke in court. He's gone before, but not often. Mostly because he can't sit in that courtroom without wanting to strangle Abby or hold Clarke and neither of those things are allowed. Well, the second might be if Clarke didn't morph into an unrecognizable force without a single hair out of place and a backbone of steel every time she sets foot in the courthouse.

He tunes out during the legal proceedings. He really doesn't care what specific crimes Abby committed. He doesn't really care what the judge has to say or the mutterings of the people surrounding them, a packed house. His attention is occupied solely by attempting to watch Clarke discreetly out of the corner of his eye. He's not sure he pulls it off because she glances at him every now and then and once squeezes his hand.

All he knows is that when it's all said and done, Abby and Jaha both get life sentences with a chance at parole. The room erupts into noise that varies in degrees of enthusiasm or dissent. It's not every day your mayor and an ex-surgeon with a blossoming political career get sentenced to jail. In the midst of it all, Clarke stands up slowly, her face giving away nothing.

Bellamy follows her, expecting to make a quick escape to try to avoid the legions of reporters, but when Clarke gets to the steps of the courthouse, she lets herself be swarmed, only showing her discomfort by tightening her grip on Bellamy's hand. There's questions and cameras and microphones being thrust in their general direction (not that anyone is actually aiming for Bellamy, but his proximity to Clarke makes him hard to miss) and a stuttering of flashes going off, but Clarke is the eye of the storm, calm and composed.

“I won't be taking any questions,” she says, her voice steady and regal and reminding him the tiniest bit of her mother. “I'll only say that my mother deserves what she gets and it's time for me to move on from all this.”

This sets off another flurry of inquisition and Bellamy has to narrow his eyes to block out all the flashes from the cameras. In the crowd, he catches a glimpse of face that looks familiar, a man with cruel eyes and harsh words. Bellamy shakes his head and the image of Dax in the crowd disappears. And then Clarke's tugging him along, pushing through the press of people, slipping in between bodies until they hit clear air and for the first time in weeks, Clarke's full, genuine smile appears. He doesn't understand it really, but there she is, smiling in the way that lights up her eyes and he hopes it's there to stay.

Four days after Abby's sentencing, Bellamy gets a job as a barista at a coffee shop near O's high school. The pay isn't as good as working for the Griffins had been and his schedule is much more regimented, but it's a job, and that's what's important. Clarke takes to coming in and ordering a large black coffee and sitting in the biggest armchair by the window to sketch. He thinks it's mostly because she still feels a little guilty about him having to look for new employment. If her dad's money wasn't all caught up in legal issues, he's guessing she'd have tried to hire him to take care of the house until she can sell it, but he wouldn't have let her do that anyway. He doesn't want to work for Clarke.

Overall, in the course of the next six weeks things are surprisingly good. Octavia has two months of school left and he's got a new job and Clarke genuinely seems to be doing better. The cold, distant person she'd become during the trial is gone, replaced by a version of Clarke that is much more familiar, if slightly more subdued than how she had been before her father's death. Sometimes he still catches her with a distant, sad expression on her face, but her panic attacks are down to only a couple times a week, which he takes as a good sign.

When Clarke is on her fourth cup of coffee for the afternoon, he cuts her off. She'll be on a caffeine high for hours. She pouts and returns to the counter every five minutes, trying to catch his coworker, Sterling, at the register instead. Finally, he gives in and makes her a refill (he secretly makes it decaff), which she skips away happily with.

He visits her corner of the coffee shop during his break, surprised to find her with a binder of papers, rather than her sketchbook. Clarke says she likes the coffee shop for people watching, but he suspects that she still doesn't like being alone for extended periods of time.

“What are you working on?” he asks, as he plops into the nearest seat and puts his feet up, relieved to have a few minutes without incredibly complicated coffee orders bouncing around his head. Clarke glances at him and bites her lip, hesitation written on her face. He doesn't like the look.

“I, um. I'm trying to decide which of these schools I like best,” she says, finally, holding the binder out to him. It's stuffed with information on various arts colleges.

“Is this _all_ of the schools you applied to?” he asks. He's not an idiot. He's had his suspicions that Clarke had heard back from some, if not all of the schools she'd applied to, but he hadn't pushed for information. He knows Clarke often has to work things out for herself first.

“Uh, yeah. I got into them.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah.” She smiles a little sheepishly. “I was going to tell you earlier, but with... everything, you know, I wasn't sure I was even going to go.”

“Congratulations.” It's probably bad that with the pride, he's got a tiny sliver of disappointment. He _wants_ Clarke to go to arts school. It's absolutely going to be better for her than hanging around Ark stewing in the past. He just also doesn't want Clarke to go.

“Are you leaning towards any in particular?”

Clarke hums thoughtfully. “RISD, maybe. Or SCAD or the Pratt Institute.” Her forehead scrunches up in thought.

“Blake! Break's over!” Sterling yells from behind the counter and he stands up, kisses Clarke on the cheek, and goes back to work. He wishes he could be good enough not to hope she chooses not to go so far away.

He's lucky enough that his 26 th  birthday falls on a Friday. He doesn't know this is lucky until he walks back in to his apartment and finds it packed with people, alcohol, and food. Clarke and Octavia descend, hugging him and both looking at him with pleading eyes that clearly say, _let us have a party?_ It's a little late to get his permission, so he just sighs and takes the beer Clarke brought him.

He spends the first hour being approached by various guests, quite a few he doesn't know, to give him birthday wishes. Fortunately, after that, things settle down and he's able to find Miller wedged in a corner with a beer in each hand.

“One is Monty's,” he says in response to Bellamy's raised eyebrows. To be honest, Bellamy didn't even know Monty was _there._ There are way too many people packed into his apartment. It's got to be some sort of fire hazard. His eyes catch on Clarke and Octavia, who have their arms around each other and are spinning in circles to the crappy dance music playing, both laughing, and any irritation about the party vanishes. He's such a sucker.

“She been okay?” Miller asks, nodding in the direction of Clarke.

“Monty doesn't tell you?” Clarke and Monty have lunch twice a week and Clarke disappears with him at various other times throughout the week and nearly always comes back in a better mood.

Miller shrugs. “You know how Monty is, he'd make the most depressed person on Earth smile. He can't get an accurate gauge on her feelings.”

“Are you trying to imply that my girlfriend is happier around _your_ boyfriend than she is around me?” Bellamy asks, but he's fighting a smile.

“Maybe,” Miller says, taking a swig from his beer. “I have a pretty awesome boyfriend.”

Bellamy snorts, but Miller's face has returned to serious and he knows he wants an answer. “She's doing better. A lot better.”

“If you keep frowning so much you're going to be a wrinkly old man by 30.”

“Fuck off.”

He catches up with Clarke as the party is winding down. She's in the kitchen, starting to put empty dishes in the sink, Octavia leaning on the counter next to her. They're talking in quiet, conspiratorial tones and shut up the moment they realize he's there. Octavia glances between him and Clarke, hastily pecks Clarke on the cheek, and slips out of the kitchen. He watches his sister go, the feeling that he's missing something reverberating in his chest. He turns his eyes back to Clarke. She's pulled her hair up and there are bits of it escaping, a messy tumble of blonde curls. Clarke complains about her hair a lot. She's constantly buying packs of hair ties and constantly snapping them or stretching them out until they're useless.

“Hey, Princess.” He leans against the counter as she turns her head to give him a smile, then turns back to the sink, adding the stopper and turning the water on hot.

She twists to face him, keeping an eye on the sink as it fills. “Happy Birthday, Bell.” She's said it about five times tonight, but he isn't complaining.

“Thanks. It looked like you and O had fun.”

Clarke beams and his heart flips over. She looks so perfectly happy, so content, and he thinks the last time she looked like that was right after the first time he kissed her.

“We did.” The music's been turned off in the other room and he can hear people shuffling towards the door. “I never thought I'd be so close with someone that much younger than me, but she's amazing.” Clarke turns the water off, slipping her hands into the steaming water and grabbing the sponge from behind the faucet.

“You wanna tell me what I walked in on?” He asks, surprisingly not feeling as concerned as he probably should. He actually feels better, knowing Octavia has Clarke to turn to. He's not naïve enough to believe that there aren't things Octavia would never talk to him about.

Clarke shrugs. “She took some advice I gave her, that's all. She would have figured it out on her own. She's smart.”

“For having to raise a sibling, I got pretty lucky, huh?”

“You did a really good job, too, you know,” she says, brow furrowed as she tries to scrub a pan that had held brownies clean. Bellamy can't help it. One second he's thinking about raising Octavia and next he's thinking about kids and babies and specifically what a baby he and Clarke made would look like and be like and how much he _wants_ that, which he's definitely not going to say.

“Are you alright?” Clarke asks, jolting him out of the dangerous path his thoughts had wandered down.

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Of course. I just zoned out for a minute.” He pushes off from the counter to kiss Clarke. She kisses back until she's consumed by giggles and he realizes that she'd put her soapy hands on his chest, the dish water sinking through his shirt. He ignores it.

“Bedroom?”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “When I'm done with the dishes. Go ahead, I'll be there in ten.”

It actually takes her twelve, and she elbows him when he informs her of this, as she's pulling her shirt over her head. He goes down on Clarke minutes after she enters the bedroom, even though she says he should be first, since it's his birthday. He doesn't care. Clarke falling apart is pretty much his favorite thing in the whole world, so that seems like a good birthday present to him.

He starts to crawl back up her body slowly, leaving kisses as he goes, Clarke's eyes hooded and lazy. She's flushed and relaxed and so fucking beautiful. The words just kind of slip out, lips trailing over the soft skin of Clarke's lower abdomen.

“I want to put a baby in here.” He shocked by his own admission, heart rate picking up, tilting his chin to meet Clarke's eyes which are wide with surprise. He's such a fucking idiot.

“I mean, not now,” he explains hurriedly. “Shit. I dunno. It just kind of snuck up on me and I've always wanted kids, but I didn't mean now.”

Clarke is still staring at him, lips parted, shock on her face.

“Shit. I'm sorry. Forget I said that.”

“Bell.” Clarke tugs gently on his hair, drawing him the rest of the way back up her body, so they're facing each other evenly.

“I'm sorry,” he repeats.

“It's okay.” Her voice is gentle, surprisingly calm, much calmer than him.

He shakes his head. “It's really not. I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean to say that or put any pressure on you or imply that was my intention or-”

“-Bell. It's _okay_ , really. I mean, no, I have absolutely no intention to have a baby in the foreseeable future. I have to, you know, get a my degree and hopefully a job and stuff, but it's okay that you feel that way.”

Bellamy groans and leans his forehead against her shoulder. “I really didn't mean now. I just... We were talking about raising Octavia and I started thinking about that process and then about babies and my brain kind of went nuts. I _do_ want kids, but not now for me either.”

Clarke slides her fingers into his hair, playing with stray curls. “I've thought about it before,” she says in a low tone. He chances a glance at her, half convinced she's joking, but her face is serious.

“I never really thought I wanted kids,” Clarke continuous. “I mean, I was in med school and I grew up with a surgeon for a parent and I couldn't see putting a kid through that and I was dating Finn and maybe even then I didn't see a future with him. It just didn't seem like me. But I watch how you are with Octavia and she's this amazing person that you've taken care of and had a hand in shaping and even though you're not technically her parent, you really are and I just... I want that. Someday, anyway.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says softly, her eyes gentle. He didn't think he could fall any more in love with Clarke, but he was wrong.

He kisses her shoulder. “I'm still sorry for blurting it out like that.”

Clarke laughs. “Okay, yeah, not your best moment, but it's your birthday, you get a pass.” She kisses him and fucking sue him if he's thinking about a little girl with dark curls and blue eyes, it's his fucking birthday.

The bell over the door at the coffee shop rings just before closing. Bellamy's in the back, putting away supplies and he nearly groans at the sound of the door. He should have locked up before he started cleaning. Now he'll have to go out there and tell a customer they're too late.

The last thing he expects when he walks out of the back is Willie Stephenson leaning on the counter, flanked by Dax and scruffy kid Bellamy doesn't recognize. He stops dead in his tracks. Something about seeing Willie, particularly seeing Willie _here_ in a place he had never, ever expected to have to deal with him, sends Bellamy back to being young and lost and unsure of himself.

“Boy,” Willie greets him.

“What are you doing here?” Bellamy isn't going to bother with niceties. Willie wouldn't be here without a reason. He's not looking forward to finding out what it is.

“Never heard of fucking Ark before,” Willie grunts, twirling one of the shop's display coffee mugs on the counter, lazily. Bellamy waits. He won't give Willie the satisfaction of asking him again.

“Not that big a'town. Not that important. But then you got a lady politician who lets a bunch of kids across the ocean die and suddenly it's blasted all over the place, isn't it? Some stupid, rich bitch who doesn't know how to run a proper con. And _then_ it turns out it's her perfect rich bitch daughter who turned her in. No fucking family loyalty these days. So imagine my surprise when behind that pretty, pretty girl all over my TV screen is _you_ , boy.”

Bellamy's hands curl in to fists, but he keeps his face blank. He's got a feeling he knows where Willie's going with this. This is a fucking nightmare.

“So, you went and pimped yourself out to a pretty girl with a lot of money, is that it, boy? You follow her around like a lost puppy and she keeps a roof over your head? You never did know how to be a _man_. But I got a little deal for you, boy, a little job. The way I see it, you owe me.”

“How's that?” Bellamy shouldn't ask, Willie would get to it eventually anyway, but he can't keep himself quiet any longer. Willie Stephenson has another thing coming if he thinks Bellamy can be bought or intimidated. He's not the boy Willie remembers.

“I kept a roof over your head and food in your mouth for years, you ungrateful little bitch. I gave your whore of a mother somewhere to live, even when she was no use to anybody.” Bellamy doesn't miss the past tense he Willie uses when he mentions Aurora. It's not a surprise, really, but it still stings.

“Like hell you did. I fed myself _and_ my mother.”

Willie's eyes go hard, the way they do when he's getting ready to throw a punch. “Now, I'm willing to let you repay that debt. And you've got a way to do it, too. Don't tell me you can't get at some of that money your girl has. Her daddy's dead and her mom's in jail and that means she's got a big ole' pile of money sitting around. I'm not asking for much. Fifty thousand.” He must not really know what sort of money Clarke's family has if that's all he's asking for.

“Sorry, I can't help you,” Bellamy says through his teeth.  
“Now, I wouldn't be so fast to say so.” Willie leans over the counter. “You left in a real hurry, you remember that? I don't think you ever got _custody_ of the girl. You get me the money or I'll take her away from you.” Bellamy's shoulders go tight at Willie's threat. He _doesn't_ have custody of Octavia and, though he's pretty sure he could get it, being a stable adult with a job while her real father is a drug lord cashing in on welfare, if Octavia is exposed, she'll likely be sent back home with Willie while Bellamy fights for her. He can't let that happen.

“Over my dead body.” He means it. They'll have to kill him before they take Octavia away. He hopes it's a bluff on Willie's part. He doesn't want his daughter, he can't even be bothered to use her name.

“You sure about that, boy?”

“I'm sure. Now get out, we're closed.”

Willie lingers in the doorway, Dax and the other boy close behind. His stepfather gives him one more hard look before he goes. Bellamy knows this won't be the last he sees of him. If Willie thinks there's money to be had, he'll stick around. The question is, how much trouble will he manage to cause?

He should have known Clarke's number one concern about the whole ordeal would be Octavia.

“He can't do that, can he? He can't actually take her away?” She's pacing the living room, frowning fiercely and tapping her fingers nervously against the outside of her thigh.

“I wouldn't let him.”

“I don't have the money,” Clarke frets. “I mean, not until all the legal issues are dealt with and that could be months. I can't-”

“-Clarke, you're not going to pay him. Not even if you could. He doesn't get to bully money out of you just because you care about Octavia.” Bellamy feels sick to his stomach about this whole thing, but there's no way that anyone is giving Willie money to leave them alone. There's no way Willie is going to win. He'll take Octavia and go somewhere else if he has to. He can be a barista anywhere, right? And it's not like Clarke's going to be in Ark much longer, so there's really not a reason to stay.

“Is it possible he'll just give up?” Clarke asks hopefully, worrying her bottom lip. It's not. Willie isn't like that, but the expression on her face reminds him of past weeks, of the way she'd worried herself until she shut down, so he swallows the truth.

“It's possible.” He's not sure Clarke believes him, but he keeps a straight face on and hopes this doesn't send her spiraling.

Two and half weeks before Octavia's school lets out for the summer, Clarke announces she's selling the house. They haven't seen Willie in that time and Bellamy is a bit on edge, constantly expecting to bump in to him or have him show up when Bellamy's closing again. He's so consumed with the Willie issue, he doesn't even hear Clarke the first time she says it.

“What?” he asks, making eye contact with her over her sketchbook.

“I'm selling the house,” she repeats, twirling her pencil between her fingers. “I mean, not right now because I _can't_ , but as soon as it's available to me it's going on the market. I've talked with my lawyer a lot and I don't want to have to deal with it again. He's going to take a ridiculous cut, I'm sure, organizing everything, but I don't care. It's not about the money.”

“You're selling the house.” It's weird to think of that property belonging to anyone but the Griffins. He's spent countless hours keeping up the land and the house and it seems like it should just cease to exist, rather than pass to someone else. He's had time to prepare himself for this, but it had never really seemed real, just an abstract Clarke talked about a little.

“I'm going back.”

“Huh?”

“To the house. I'm going back to get the last of the things I want and _everything_ else goes with the house, an estate sale.”

Bellamy's not even really sure what the fuck an estate sale is, but he's not about to argue. He knows the look on Clarke's face and nothing in the world could change her mind about this. She wants the house and the things in it gone.

“I want you to come to the house with me.”

“Now?” He feels off kilter in this conversation, not quite sure what's going to come next. Clarke shakes her head.

“Tonight. I thought you might want something, like, I think we have ridiculous expensive cooking utensils.” Clarke has gone back to sketching and Bellamy isn't sure if she's actually feeling casual about all this, or if it's a front.

“Um. Okay?”

She meets his eyes long enough to give him a smile. “Great. Tonight, then.”

They end up at her house later than expected, a little after midnight. It's due mostly to Octavia's insistence on making a mile long list of things they should bring back. Bellamy's pretty sure both he and Clarke will be disowned if they leave a single pair of Clarke's shoes behind. Octavia had wanted to just come herself, but she's got finals to study for and Bellamy had put his foot down. They'd be stuck at Clarke's house for _hours_ if Octavia was involved in packing.

“It's weird,” Clarke says, as she bundles clothes into a set of rolling suitcases, while Bellamy packs shoes. “It doesn't even feel like the house I grew up in.” He notices she doesn't bother to fold her clothes, something that is just _so_ Clarke it makes him smile.

“Like, it's the same walls, same stuff, but it just feels... hollow.” She shrugs, zipping up her suitcase. “I don't think I'm going to miss it.”

They work in silence for half an hour before Clarke finishes with her clothes. She turns in a circle eyes sliding over the room, forehead creased. It's not very personal anyway, something Bellamy's always been curious about but not brave enough to ask.

“I'm gonna go get some air. I'll be back in a minute.” He watches her go, wishing he had any read on how she feels about this whole thing. Leaving his childhood home had been an escape, but Clarke is sure to have some good memories here, time with her dad or Wells. He hopes she isn't being rash, choosing to sell it so quickly. On the other hand, maybe it will be easier to make a fresh start without this place where so much has happened hanging over her.

He doesn't think anything of it until Clarke's gone for more than twenty minutes. He finishes with her shoes, checks his phone, and realizes it's been longer than he thought. Maybe she'd wanted him to follow her and now he's being the dick boyfriend who doesn't know when his girlfriend needs support. With this in mind, hurries down the stairs, turns the corner to the kitchen, and stops dead.

For a moment, all he sees is Clarke, standing near the island in the kitchen with the strangest expression on her face. Then the rest of the scene catches up with him, namely, Willie Stephenson with a gun to Clarke's temple.

“Ah, there he is. Took you long enough, boy.”

Bellamy feels like he can't breathe. He's frozen in terror, adrenaline rushing his system and making his hands shake. He's had nightmares like this.

“Now, will you look at this place?” Willie grins maniacally. “Looks like fifty thousand is just a drop in the bucket.”

He wants to say something. He wants to demand that Willie let Clarke go, but he keeps his mouth firmly shut. He sees the sheen in Willie's eyes, high as fuck. When Willie's high he gets reckless and when Willie feels reckless, he's incredibly violent and easy to set off. One wrong word and that's bullet in Clarke's head.

“I don't have the money you want,” Clarke says and she's standing up straight, jaw set, eyes full of fire. She's magnificent and Bellamy is simultaneously proud and horrified. She doesn't know Willie like he does. She's going to get herself killed.

Willie barks out a laugh. “Don't _have_ the money. I'm not an idiot, you little bitch. Just because I didn't grow up with a fucking silver spoon in my mouth doesn't mean I'm stupid.”

It all happens very fast. One moment they're all suspended there and the next Clarke smashes her elbow back into Willie's face. If it wasn't so unexpected and Willie wasn't so high, it probably wouldn't have so much as budged his stepfather, but it _is_ unexpected and Willie reels back, stumbles, the gun slipping from his fingers and clattering across the floor.

Bellamy doesn't think about moving, he just does, the gun in his hand before he even knows what's happened. He swings it around and finds Willie yanking Clarke back, a kitchen knife pressed tight enough to her throat that there's a trickle of blood slipping down her neck. Willie's nose is bleeding profusely and his eyes are dangerous. He's using Clarke like a human shield, very slightly offset from her.

“I don't think you want to do that, boy.” He presses the knife a little more into Clarke's skin, more blood flowing and she grimaces, but keeps quiet. Willie's right. Bellamy doesn't want to have a gun pointed at his stepfather while Willie holds Clarke captive with a knife. He doesn't want to have to risk a shot when he could very easily hit Clarke. He doesn't want any of this. But like many things in his life, they're here, and he has to do something.

“So here's what's going to happen,” Willie is saying. “I'm gonna walk her out to my car, you're gonna put the gun down...” Bellamy tunes out Willie's words.

He's seen Willie's eyes like this before, the glint and the anger in them. He wants to hurt someone. He wants to hurt _Clarke_. No matter what Bellamy does, Willie's not going to let her go. If he puts down the gun, Clarke's throat will be slit in seconds. He takes a deep breath, slow and deliberate. He hasn't held a gun in two years, but he lived by one for twenty three. He pulls the trigger.

He drops the gun, hands no longer steady, and it's like oxygen and sound have been sucked right out of the world. He can still feel the recoil of the gun in his hand.

“Bell?” Clarke brings him out of the void. Her arms are around his neck and he doesn't remember getting here, with Clarke wrapped around him, but it's better than where he was a moment ago. He can see Willie, sprawled on the floor, the blood slowly spreading out from his head. He closes his eyes, blocks out the image. The blood reminds him of Clarke's neck and he pulls her body away from his, holding her arms, feeling oddly detached and concerned at the same time.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his own voice sounding harsh in the silence.

“I'm fine. It's not that deep.” The blood is already beginning to dry on her neck. “Should we... do we call the police?”

He looks back to Willie and he wants to feel something, horrified, sick, guilty, but he doesn't. He just feels empty. He has to think. He has to make the best decision. Willie had broken in, attacked them, but Bellamy had shot him when he was trying to negotiate. He doesn't know exactly how legal that is. And if the police come, they'll look in to him, they'll realize he's not Octavia's legal guardian and they'll take her away, put her in foster care.

He thinks about cold nights out in the woods, one hand buried in his coat pocket, the other hand holding a trembling flashlight as he lights the way for the men. He thinks about garbage bags and anchors and shovels and chainsaws.

“No.” Clarke's eyes are on him, quiet and assessing. “I know how to take care of body. It's the one thing Willie ever taught me.”

Clarke doesn't say anything at all and he doesn't look at her because he doesn't want to know if she sees what he feels. He isn't ready to know yet if everything's changed. First thing's first. He picks up the gun from the floor.

He doesn't start to feel anything until after he's dropped Clarke off back at the apartment, her suitcases and some dishes from the kitchen in tow. She doesn't seem spooked at all, her eyes clear and her hands relaxed as she pulls her things from the truck. His eyes linger on her neck, on the trail of blood.

“It's okay,” she says. “I can handle it.” And then she's up the stairs and he's driving back to her house to get rid of his stepdad's body. He blanks a lot of it out. He used to do that when he was a kid too, when someone crossed Willie, snitched or tried to take off with his money or his drugs, and Willie put them in the ground instead. He'd never seen it happen, but he'd seen the bodies. He knows how not to get caught. No one's looking for someone like Willie anyway.

What he does remember about that night is throwing up in the bushes in front of the house when it's all over, retching until there's nothing but stomach acid coming up. He remembers walking in his front door and seeing Clarke's sketchbook on the floor by the sofa, next to Octavia's shoes. He remembers standing in the shower, even after the water's run cold. He remembers the white bandage on Clarke's neck and the way she runs her fingers through his hair until he falls asleep. He remembers that when he wakes up to nightmares that night, they're his own, not Clarke's.

They form a silent agreement not to tell Octavia. She's not a child, but she doesn't need to know this either. It will catch up to him one day or it won't, that's all there is to it. She knows there's something wrong, though. She's not stupid and he sees the way her eyes linger on him, aware there's something off, even if he's trying to keep it hidden.

It's almost too easy to go through the motions of everyday life, to go to work and smile at the customers and joke with Clarke on his break and have movie night on Friday and not feel any of it. He feels like he's floating, a little bit out of his body at all times. Occasionally, Clarke grounds him, pulls him back to earth with serious eyes and quiet words, but it hurts to be here, it hurts like someone's ripping something out of his chest and he can't feel remorse for Willie, but he does feel something dark, eating away at his insides. It's the fact that he doesn't feel bad about it that's tearing at him.

“Bell, I need you to talk to me,” Clarke says one night, curled up next to him on the sofa, a crease between her eyebrows.

“I do.”

“No, you don't. You don't really talk _to_ anyone anymore. It's like you're not there.”

He looks away because she's right, because he doesn't feel like he is there. He feels detached, the only form of self defense he has. He wants to make it last as long as possible, but the way Clarke's looking at him has him falling quickly back towards earth.

“You had to do it,” she murmurs. “You didn't have a choice.”

“I know.”

“He would have killed me.”

“I know. It's not that.” He doesn't want to see her face when she realizes he's not the least bit guilty. That's the worst part.

“Then what is it?”

“I don't feel bad,” he whispers, the reality of it all threatening to swallow him. “What does that say about me, that I don't feel bad about shooting my own stepdad in the head?”

“It doesn't say anything about you.”

He scoffs, the situation setting in just a little bit more. Clarke moves, grasping his face and forcing him to look at her. Her eyes a vibrant, bright with an intensity he's not sure he's ever seen before. Even in the midst of his own self hatred, he can't help but marvel at her.

“I'm serious,” she says fiercely. “It doesn't say _anything_ about you. It says something about him. It says that he was the type of guy who beats his wife and cooks meth and abandons his daughter and kills people who get in his way. It says he was the type of guy who only ever teaches his stepson to hide bodies or what it feels like to be hurt and tries to hold his girlfriend for ransom. It says he's the type of guy we're all better off without. I'm glad he's dead and it's only _natural_ if you are too.”

“I shot him in the head and felt _nothing_ , that can't be normal.”

“Bellamy, if you need forgiveness, I'll give that to you. You're forgiven. If you let this break you, he wins, Bell.” He looks at her face, at the conviction in her eyes and he knows she believes every word. He tries to force himself to believe it too.

It's slow, coming to terms with who he might be. It takes more sleepless nights and more of Clarke's words and gentle hands and quiet patience. It takes getting up in the morning and thinking about it and going to bed and thinking about it, but he finds a tentative peace within himself. He doesn't know if it will last, but eventually, the numbness is gone and the world he finds outside of it doesn't make him hate himself, that's the most he can ask for.

Clarke, it seems, has found strength in his struggle, everything about her stronger than ever. She hasn't woken up with a panic attack in over three weeks and while he's having nightmares about killing the people he loves without feeling anything, she's holding his hand and smiling and teaching Octavia dance again. He doesn't know why this trauma hasn't ripped through her the way the others in her life have, but he thinks it probably has something to do with look in her eyes when she'd said she's glad Willie is dead.

It's probably because of these things that he doesn't expect her to say what she does, curled on her side, facing him in bed.

“I'm scared.”

“Of what?” Because she'd watched her boyfriend become a killer and hardly even flinched, so it must be something powerful to scare Clarke Griffin.

“Of going off to school,” she admits, sliding her fingers up and down the inside of his forearm.

“You'll be great, Princess. All those schools wanted you for a reason.”

“I guess I said that wrong. I'm not afraid of going, I'm afraid of leaving.”

“Leaving? Why? You hate this place.” She does. She's told him a hundred times that she wants to leave Ark behind for good.

“Yeah, but I love you.” Her fingers still on his arm. “What if a thousand miles is too far?”

Bellamy rolls on top of her and pins her under his weight the way she likes. “It's not. I mean, of all the shit we've been through, we can handle distance.”

“Promise?” Her vulnerability is written all over her and he wants nothing more in that moment than he wants for her to feel secure. It doesn't matter that the distance scares him too.

“Promise.” He kisses her gently. “But you should do one thing before you go.”

“Don't say it,” Clarke warns.

“You should see her. Don't you need closure?”

“I _have_ closure. It's called a life sentence.”

“Clarke.”

“I mean it.” She tugs on one of his curls. “I don't want to see her again. It wouldn't do any good.” He lets the subject drop, but he lies awake long after Clarke falls asleep in his arms, thinking about jail cells and a thousand miles and Willie's body. He falls asleep thinking about the discussion he needs to have with Octavia.

Clarke might refuse to see Abby, but he goes anyway. He supposes she could refuse to see _him_ , but she doesn't and he ends up sitting across a table from her a holding area for visitors. Somehow, she looks regal, even in the jumpsuit. Neither one of them says anything for a few minutes, they just watch each other and Bellamy tries to push his anger away, it's not why he's here.

“Clarke won't visit,” he tells her, finally.

“And you, what, decided you would come so you could report back to her?” Abby asks, chin up, in control.

“No. She doesn't know I'm here.”

“Why _are_ you here?”

“You know, my mother wasn't a perfect woman. She did bad things. She hurt me and my sister, even if she didn't mean to. She could be selfish. But no matter what she did, no matter what _you_ did, I felt there was still one thing that you both deserved. And that's to know that your child is not alone. She is loved. Clarke is _so_ loved. And I have to believe you're not so cold that you don't need to hear that. I have to believe you love her too.”

Bellamy stands up. He's said what he came here to say and he doesn't expect a response. He gets two steps away when Abby speaks.

“I tried.”

He faces her again, but doesn't respond. If she has something she wants to say, she'll say it.

“I tried to keep Clarke from getting in that car.” Abby is looking at him with eyes that beg to be understood. She can't tell anyone this, not in the proper words, unless she wants to face a murder charge as well. But she's telling him. She's telling Clarke. Bellamy gives her a small nod, so she knows he understands, before he walks away.

Clarke's departure date sneaks up on him. One day they have all summer, and the next she's packing. She's gotten quieter as the days she has left in Ark dwindle. He's probably a coward for waiting so long to bring it up, but he's a little scared she'll say no, or at least be mad. It's really the sort of thing he should have consulted her about, but he's not the best at doing things the right way.

She's got a suitcase up on their bed, filling it with clothes, when he leans against the door frame, watching her. His hands feel a little sweaty. Octavia's hovering around his shoulder, looking more excited than worried.

“Clarke?” he tries.

“Hhhmm?” she's sorting socks, not looking at him.

“What if... What if O and I came with you?”

She looks up, frowning. “Like, to drop me off?”

“No, I mean, what if we moved with you?” His heart is literally going to beat out of his chest and he's going to die, right here, in the doorway to his bedroom.

Clarke stares at him. “Are you joking?”

“No.”

“But you can't. You have a job. And Octavia has school, and I leave in three days. You can't just-”

“Of course we can!” Octavia interjects, pushing past Bellamy to throw her arms around Clarke. “I don't care about my school here. Bellamy already quit his job. You're family.”

Clarke looks stunned, lips parted, glancing between Octavia, who's clinging to her, and Bellamy.

“You mean it?” she whispers. And he's pretty sure she's asking about the “family” part, not the moving, but he nods because the answer to both is _yes_. Clarke looks a little torn between smiling and crying and he pushes himself off the wall to envelop both the girls in a hug, the most important people in the world. He's already thinking about how he's going to have to go buy boxes to pack into and how he hopes Clarke's face will light up when he tells her he's even looked into the community colleges near her school. He's so happy, he probably hugs them both a little too tight. Octavia grumbles in annoyance and elbows him in the ribs and Clarke laughs and it's fucking perfect.

He's been here before, fitting everything he owns in this shitty truck and leaving a place behind him that he never expects to see again. But it's different this time. This time, Clarke's sitting between him and Octavia, her fingers tangled with his, arguing with him about the radio. It doesn't change the fact that Clarke's father is dead at the hand of her mother, or that Octavia has to change schools again, or that Bellamy shot his own stepfather in the head to save Clarke. It can't change the past. But this time, driving away, it doesn't feel like running away. It feels like going home.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, this was it. It's been a fabulous ride with you. I apologize for the slight delay on this chapter, my grandfather fell and broke his hip and had to have emergency surgery (he's 94 and pretty fragile) so the editing for chapter 5 got pushed back a little. Thank you so much for reading and commenting and just generally experiencing this with me. I have so many Bellarke ideas that I want to write, but I'm gonna have to take a little break before I start my next fic because I get way too absorbed by them. I really can't function very well as a human being while I'm working on these, so I need a little while off (I have 0 ability to read other things while I'm in writing mode and there's a couple of books I really want to read before I block the rest of the world out again). That being said, I definitely plan to write more Bellarke in the future. I'm completely overwhelmed by all your kind words and support. As someone who is not an aspiring writer (I'm about to graduate college in November with a film degree which is extra scary) I'm thrilled that you all have enjoyed it as much as you have, it's been an awesome experience for me. I'm actually really sad to wrap up this fic because the response to it has been so positive and incredible and I've had so much fun with this one. You are all awesome!


	6. A/N

**Hi my beautiful readers,**

**I apologize that this isn't an addition to the story, but I wanted to let everyone know that this fic has been nominated in this year's Bellarke Fanfiction Awards in the Best Modern AU category! This is incredibly flattering & I'm very excited. [HERE](http://bellarkefanfictionawards.tumblr.com/post/147720433667/wow-almost-80-people-filled-out-nomination-forms) is the link to the nominations in & where you can vote in the awards (which you can do once per day through the 28th). Also, Stars In The Water, Blood On Our Hands has been nominated as well for Best Canon Fiction. **

**I sincerely hope you all are doing well! In other news, I have a new in progress fic called[Home](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7464843/chapters/16963818), if you're interested in reading a Modern AU Bellarke mystery fic. **

**Thanks to everyone who reads & supports my fanfiction, you guys are all awesome & your love and support means so much to me. **

**\- Erin/grumpybell**

**(p.s. I apologize if any of you are reading this message on both Stars & Angels, I thought I should update both)**

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is eating my life.
> 
> I've got about 25k of this written, so hopefully the updates will be timely, as I edit and keep working. I'd say its' about 70% done at the moment, but it could always end up longer than I think it will.


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